WHALEY 





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Book_^V\|Vl_ 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE DIVINITY 
WITHIN US 



BY W:- p. WHALEY 



Nashville, Tenn.; Dallas, Tex. 

Publishing House of the M, E. Church, South 

Smith & Lamar, Agents 

1907 



n'^^ 



LIBRARY of C0NGKE5S. 
Two Copies Receivaa 

NOV 22 1907 

Copy right tntry 

CLASS A XXc. Wo. 

COPY B. 



COPYRIGHT, 1907 

BY 

W. P. WHALEY 



A PERSONAL NOTE. 

For some years I have been busy writing 
upon the fleshly tablets of young hearts the 
message of the Great Teacher — too busy to 
write with pen and ink upon paper. That is my 
loved employ, and I dare not neglect it for any 
other. However, I have been seizing the few 
odd moments for the preparation of these seven 
short chapters. The thoughts in this book have 
been helpful to me, and that is why I have writ- 
ten them out for you. There is not- much, if 
anything, new here. If you are an extensive 
reader, you have already found much of it bet- 
ter expressed elsewhere. If you do find any- 
thing that has not occurred in your former read- 
ing, do not deal rashly with it ; but be courteous 
toward it, even if you must finally reject it. 

I hope the name of the book, and the arrange- 
ment of the matter, will cause some to think 
again upon old truths. My chief desire for the 



4 The Divinity Within Us. 

book is — like my ambition for my own useful- 
ness — that it may reach and help at least a few 
who are not reached and helped by better books. 

In writing these pages, I have thought fre- 
quently of the young men and young women 
whom I have tried to help in my pulpit and 
pastoral work. I should like for all of them 
to have these chapters. There are many others 
whose lives would be enriched, inspired, and re- 
joiced by a consideration of these things. 

I offer the same apology for this little book 
that I do for myself — I mean well. 

Cordially, W. P. Whaley. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

Origin of the Human Body 9 



CHAPTER n. 
Origin and Definition of Man 29 

CHAPTER HI. 
Matter and Spirit 51 

CHAPTER IV. 

Ministry of the Material 83 

CHAPTER V. 
Ministry of the Immaterial iii 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Blessedness of Hunger 135 

CHAPTER Vn. 
The Days of Our Pilgrimage 161 



MY STAR. 

All that I know 

Of a certain star 
Is, it can throw 

(Like the angled spar) 
Now a dart of red, 

Now a dart of blue ; 
Till my friends have said 

They would fain see, too, 

My star that dartles the red and the blue! 
Then it stops like a bird ; like a flower, hangs furled : 

They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. 
What matter to me if their star is a world? 

Mine has opened its soul to me ; therefore I love it. 

— Robert Browning. 



COMMENDATORY. 

I HAVE read in proof this little book. I cheer- 
fully speak in its behalf a word of commendation. 

The book pertains to the development of in- 
dividual character, and the possibilities involved 
in the future history of our race. The author 
has high ideals for the one and for the other. 
In the individual he shows us what it is to live 
for the soul and not for the body, to cultivate 
the spiritual nature and lay hold on eternal life. 
The motive for such a life is in faith of man's 
relation to a far-reaching purpose of his Creator. 
The thoughts which are presented on this subject 
are inspiring and strengthening, and sufficiently 
original to be striking. As respects the future of 
the race, the doctrine of the author is evolution 
upward, out of the carnal into the spiritual. 

The opening chapters give us the speculations 
of the scientist, not without significant pointings 
to man's future. It doth not yet appear what 
man shall be on this earth. I am not an evolution- 



8 The Dmnity Within Us, 

ist in the common meaning of the term ; ''yet I 
doubt not through the ages one increasing pur- 
pose runs/' Science, in its wildest speculations, 
gives us inspiring suggestions and prophecies 
worthy of faith. 

The relations of the material and the spiritual 
are more and more engaging the thought of the 
psychologists of our time, and all investigation 
seems to bring the spiritual and the material 
nearer together in our faith. What the author 
suggests on this subject will, no doubt, strike the 
reader as bold ; but it lies in the path along which 
lately discovered truths are pointing. 

In the chapters on the ideals of life, its inspira- 
tions, and its conduct, our author emerges into 
the clearest light. 

The style of the writer is pleasing, and I know 
that a devout love of truth and strong faith in 
God have prompted his inquiries and guided his 
pen. J. E. GoDBEY. 

Hendrix College, Conway, Ark., October 15, 1907. 



I. 
ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN BODY 



In the beginning God. — Moses. 

Flower in the crannied wall, 
I pluck you out of the crannies; 
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 
Little flower — but if I could understand 
What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
I should know what God and man is. 

— Tennyson. 



CHAPTER I. 
Origin of the Human Body. 

Truth is one. There can be no conflict in 
that realm. The honest scientist seeks the truth. 
The reverent rehgionist seeks the truth. There 
is no more war between science and reHgion 
than between differing schools of science or be- 
tween differing schools of religion. The sci- 
entist should be reverent and religious; the 
Christian should be fearless and scientific. A 
devout and religious spirit has characterized 
many of our ablest scientists; so that, knowing 
God, they have the more readily found the lines 
of truth running through his creation. The con- 
tributions of science have wonderfully enriched 
Christianity. The greatest Christian minds have 
been marvelouslv reassured and satisfied at find- 
ing their cherished religious convictions corre- 
lated with the natural facts surely established 
by scientists. 

Great, honest, reverent, scientific, toiling 
minds deserve the thanks and patience of all 
men. By their unselfish, patient, impartial, and 



12 The Dkmity Within Us. 

unrelenting labors, they are conferring inesti- 
mable advantages upon the whole race. There 
have been many great discoveries, and there are 
many amazing speculations. Science makes 
progress mainly by laying down hypotheses, and 
then setting to work to ascertain the truth in 
the case. For a time, the mind may track along 
after a false theory ; and, in its enthusiasm, make 
many reckless affirmations ; but all truth thus 
crushed to earth shall rise again. Honest 
thought and painstaking research must discover 
truth finally. We cannot be required to accept 
that which has not been proved true. Until the 
establishment of certainty, opinion must be free, 
but it must be teachable. None but children in 
this sense can enter either the religious or the 
scientific kingdom. Christ said: ''Except ye be 
converted and become as little children, ye can- 
not enter into the kingdom of heaven." The 
great scientist, Mr. Huxley, said: ''Science 
seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest 
manner the great truth which is embodied in 
the Christian conception of entire surrender to 
the will of God. Sit down before fact as a little 
child, be prepared to give up every preconceived 
notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever 
abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. 



Origin of the Human Body. 13 

I have only begun to learn content and peace of 
mind since I have resolved at all risks to do 
this." 

The Bible is a revelation of God. It is not a 
scientific presentation of natural phenomena. It 
tells us absolutely nothing about the great phys- 
ical laws of the universe. ''A single chapter is 
sufficient to tell us that God made the heavens 
and the earth.'' Even that information is given 
us in the most general terms. The number and 
names of the material elements are not given. 
There is no attempt to tell us what matter is. 
There is not a hint at any of the chemical rules 
or formulae. The law of gravitation could never 
have been known by a study of the Bible. Men 
read the books of Moses for thousands of years 
without getting the faintest intimation of the 
giant forces which we have harnessed for our 
daily service. The one thing that Scripture 
postulates concerning the material universe is 
that God created it. The method and the time 
of this creation are not given. If men had no 
more knowledge of the earth than they get from 
the Bible, they would not know^ enough to main- 
tain themselves on it twenty-four hours. The 
Bible is a story of God and man, wath the pur- 
pose to show the proper relation between them. 



14 The Divinity Within Us. 

As such, it is the Book of books. It is authori- 
tative and an impregnable Gibraltar of truth. 
As a treatise on natural phenomena, it is out- 
ranked by almost anything in the catalogue of 
scientific publications. 

From the Bible we learn that God is behind 
and the cause of all creation. We learn also 
that man is God's child, and we find what the 
Father's will is concerning this child. But if 
we care to know the processes of creation, the 
age of the human race, the physical laws of our 
world, and the other vast wealth locked in God's 
handiwork, we shall have to read the record in 
stone, and think God's thoughts after him among 
the stars. 

Looking over the world's myriad life, some 
have stumbled at the doctrine of divine creation 
and generation, and have tried to establish the 
theory of Spontaneous Generation. By many 
careful experiments, Mr. Huxley and Mr. Tyn- 
dall, who were inclined to believe the theory, 
were convinced that Spontaneous Generation is 
an impossibility. Others since these have con- 
tinued to experiment up to the present, but none 
of them have succeeded in developing life out 
of germless and lifeless matter. The reluctant 
testimony of Tyndall is still true : "I affirm that 



Origin of the Human Body, 15 

no shred of trustworthy experimental testimony 
exists to prove that life in our day has ever ap- 
peared independently of antecedent life." Death 
never begets life. Life comes from life. Matter 
is dead. It has no energy, nor intelligence, nor 
life. It is utterly helpless. It cannot act. It 
can only be acted upon. It is perfectly passive 
in the hands of the many forces that play upon 
it. If disorganized and dispersed through space 
and left to itself, matter could never organize 
itself into spheres, much less the possibility of 
developing into living and intelligent beings. 
Biogenesis, or the doctrine of life from life, is 
"victorious along the whole line at the present 
day," and is the accepted creed of the scientific 
world. Without our Bible postulate, '^In the 
beginning God," science is unable to build our 
universe, and far less able to people it. 

Every law of mental courtesy demands that 
we give intellectual hospitality to the theory of 
Evolution. As yet it is only a theory. Science 
has shown the possibility, the probability, and 
now seems to border on the certainty of it. But, 
though it is yet largely a matter of inference, 
the theory of evolution should have courteous 
treatment. Many evolutionists are devout Chris- 
tians, and find their religious views and their 



i6 The Divinity Within Us. 

scientific views mutually complementary. A 
German theologian and scientist, Rudolf Schmid, 
in 1906, said: 'The theory of descent has thus 
in fact become the general basis of all scientific 
research into the origin of species. I know of 
but one scientist who rejects the theory of de- 
scent; I mean the zoologist, Albert Fleisch- 
mann/' If the theory forms a satisfactory work- 
ing hypothesis for the great minds that are 
making a specialty of zoological study and in- 
vestigation, it is certainly thereby recommended 
to our courteous consideration at least. 

All these scientists, while holding uncompro- 
misingly to the doctrine of evolution, readily 
admit that all data has not yet been gathered 
necessary to an absolute demonstration. They 
are satisfied themselves, but have not all the 
items with which to make a mathematical dem- 
onstration that will compel even the unwilling 
to believe. While agreeing upon the general 
theory, the scientists themselves are not agreed 
upon all the details. They are still debating such 
questions as : Did the entire organic world spring 
from a single cell, and so make but a single 
genealogical tree? Or did life start from many 
cells, at dififerent times and places, and so make 
many genealogical trees? Has evolution been 



Origin of the Human Body, 17 

gradual, or spasmodic, or both? Many links 
necessary to complete the chain have never been 
found. Much coveted information may never 
be found, and the most ardent advocates of the 
theory only hope to establish it with reasonable 
certainty. "Yet, in spite of the many gaps which 
will probably never be filled, the history of or- 
ganisms is being rapidly compiled with an in- 
creasing degree of continuity in the series of life 
epochs, the lines of descent of many races of 
animals and plants have been established, and 
the sequence of those events in geological his- 
tory that bear upon the conditions of existence 
of extinct fauna has been worked out for sev- 
eral portions of the earth's surface, and with a 
surprising degree of detail." 

Geologists are unable to accept the notion that 
the earth is of recent origin, and Bible scholars 
are agreeing that the notion is an unwarranted 
inference from the brief and general account 
given by Moses. The agreement is almost unan- 
imous among these scientists that the age of the 
earth cannot be less than one hundred million 
years, and some have thought that it might be 
as much as one billion and four hundred million 
years. If the Bible does not tell us the age of 
the earth, we may read and believe the record 
2 



1 8 The Divinity Within Us. 

in the earth itself, which is also God's book with 
an undoubted authorship. The thought of such 
an age may make our brains to reel, but we may 
recover by remembering that it is less than eter- 
nity. 

Paleontology, a closely affiliated science, has 
been developed along with geology. It deals 
with the ancient forms of life that have inhab- 
ited the earth during the past geological periods. 
Students on this line are unable to accept the 
doctrine that organic life is of recent origin in 
the earth. Haeckel estimates that living crea- 
tures have been on the earth for an age of not 
less than one hundred million years. This has 
been divided into five periods as follows: Pri- 
mordial, the period of skull-less animals, 52,000,- 
000 years ; primary, the period of fishes, 34,000,- 
000 years; secondary, the period of reptiles, 11,- 
000,000 years; tertiary, the period of mammals, 
3,000,000 years; quaternary, the period of the 
man animal, at least 100,000 years. 

To quote the recent words of Rudolf Schmid, 
a German scholar and theologian : "The concep- 
tion which has found widest acceptance, not only 
among scientists but also among the uninitiated, 
is the idea that the theories of descent and of 
evolution are identical, and that the theory of 



Origin of the Human Body. 19 

the origin of species by means of descent from 
each other means nothing else than that the 
species have originated from each other in im- 
measurably long periods of time by means of 
gradual evolution. This evolution is conjec- 
tured to have happened so gradually that the 
difference between two generations is hardly 
noticeable, while in the course of millions of 
years it has extended over the w^hole vast realm 
of organisms, extinct as well as extant.'' Again : 
''One cannot avoid the supposition that the first 
individuals of higher species came into exist- 
ence not in fully developed form, but through 
an embryonic development, and that these em- 
bryos cannot have had their protecting and nour- 
ishing mantle except in the womb of one of the 
most nearly related of the low^er species/' 

It was inevitable that, after scientists had sat- 
isfied themselves of this descent and kinship in 
the low^er animal world, they should seek a re- 
lation between man and this lower world. It 
was known that, physically, he is an animal. It 
was ascertained that the embryonic development 
of a human individual in this day is very like 
the embryonic evolution of the higher animals. 
It was found that all the organs of the human 
body are fashioned according to the one plan 



20 The Divinity Within Us. 

running through the lower animals of his class. 
''The hands and feet of a man, the hands of a 
monkey, the paws of a beast of prey, the hoof 
of a horse, the feet of an ox, the fore limbs of 
a mole, the fins of a whale, and the wings of a 
bat down to the smallest bones, all correspond to 
each other; they are homologous to the smallest 
particular/' Numerous organs fully developed 
and active in the higher animals were found still 
in the human body, though rudimentary and 
inactive. We must note the striking outward re- 
semblance between the human body and some 
of the most highly developed animals. From 
facts like these it has come to be universally 
recognized among scientists that man's physical 
nature is closely related to the other animal 
world, and represents the highest stage in the 
upward development of mammals. Yet "up till 
now there have been no indisputable forms dis- 
covered bridging animals and men." The 
thoughtful and scientific mind does not require 
every detail in a scheme before rendering a ver- 
dict. We have reached all our conclusions long 
before we have welded all the links in the chain 
of reason. 

God is just as necessary to the theory of evo- 
lution as to any other theory of creation. Evo- 



Origin of the Human Body. 21 

lution is now recognized as simply God's method 
of work. In a little book, ''Evolution and Man/' 
Rev. J. W. Conley, D.D., advocates what he 
calls Theistic Evolution. God is recognized as 
dominant and controlling throughout the uni- 
verse. He avoids the pantheistic identification 
of God with nature. God is different and above, 
yet everywhere operative in nature. He is the 
Power at work everyw^here; not as a mechanic, 
molding and shaping things from without, but 
as a vital, generative agency working within ex- 
isting forms for the development of higher 
forms. The bioplastic cell is not the residence 
of blind, natural force, but the workshop of the 
Almighty. Matter is mere capacity. God is the 
will, intelligence, and power. Matter, in its last 
analysis, is doubtless but a single elemicnt. It 
must be brought to certain conditions in order 
to be subject to certain forces. New forces have 
been brought into operation as material condi- 
tions have become ready. There is no such 
thing as spontaneous generation. Only life be- 
gets life. Other forces have appeared when ma- 
terial conditions were suitable for their opera- 
tion. Why not suppose that the vital energy 
resident in God entered this material universe 
as soon as conditions were right? This would 



2 2 The Divinity Within Us. 

be neither spontaneous generation nor special 
creation, but theistic evolution. The "unknown 
cause'^ back of variation is God, who, at the 
crucial point, when conditions are right, brings 
into operation the law of variation, not as blind 
or accidental force, and works the divine up- 
building purpose. 

This view is entirely distinct from such no- 
tions as ''the promise and potency of all things 
in matter,'' as it is also from the theory of ''spe- 
cial intervention.'' Evolution is simply God's 
method of expressing himself in nature. "The 
process began far back in the almost limitless 
past — mechanical forces first, chemical forces 
next, then vital force in its lowest form, and then 
step after step and stage after stage until men- 
tal and spiritual forces appeared. Just as rap- 
idly as matter in its progress and combination 
with lower forces could receive the higher, these 
were present to begin operations, and thus evo- 
lution has gone on during the ages." 

If God was needed at the beginning, he is 
needed all along the way to the ultimate con- 
summation of the gigantic scheme. As a moving 
train must have not only an initial application of 
power but a constant application of power, so 
the process of evolution demands not only the 



Origin of the Human Body. 23 

application of divine energy in the beginning, 
but the ever-present inflow of this energy and 
the continuous superintendence of divine inteUi- 
gence. Both the train and the evolutionary 
scheme must have an increase of energy when 
grades are to be made leading to higher levels 
of progress. The ''progressive impulses" in na- 
ture are due to ''the transcendent^ yet immanent, 
God touching with new energy the generative 
forces, the existing life, to produce still higher 
forms." 

"When the w'orld was ready for man, and the 
old progress could go no farther without a new 
and higher order of being, God, in harmony with 
the law of progress prevailing from the begin- 
ning, touched with generative power the hidden 
fountain of life in the highest form of animal, 
and man was brought forth. This is not direct 
creation, it is not mxaterialistic evolution, nor is 
it any compromise between the two. It is what 
may possibly be called generative evolution. It 
is God, the author of all life, begetting and de- 
veloping life in an orderly and progressive way, 
until a culmination is reached in man. This 
conception of man's origin makes him an inte- 
gral part of the evolutionary process. There is 
no break anywhere in the comprehensive and 



24 The Divinity Within Us. 

far-reaching scheme. At the same time it gives 
him a divine relationship that is in perfect keep- 
ing vi^ith his pov^ers and immeasurable capabili- 
ties." 

Some are repulsed and horrified at the sug- 
gestion of their physical relationship with the 
lov^er animals. They might reflect that if these 
lower creatures have not dignified the dust of 
which we are formed, neither have they dis- 
graced it as have some in the higher rank. It 
seems that we might take great satisfaction 
from the belief that God has wrought steadily, 
harmoniously, and progressively for a hundred 
million years in fashioning this human temple 
and fitting it with the delicate and responsive 
instruments suited to the touch and use of an 
imperial intellect and an immortal soul — instru- 
ments that he himself can play upon, for this 
is God's temple as well as man's. God is eternal, 
and does not need to do his work in six earth 
days. He "worketh hitherto.'' 

Just when human life began has not been de- 
termined. I quote from ''The Scientific Creed 
of a Theologian," by Dr. Schmid: 'That man 
came into existence in the geological Tertiary 
Period, as many geologists think they have al- 
ready discovered, is indeed probable, but up till 



Origin of the Human Body. 25 

now it has not been proved as an indisputable 
fact. Yet in any case, in the Diluvial Period, 
which followed immediately on the Tertiary 
Period, we come upon very numerous and quite 
indisputable traces of human existence in Eu- 
rope, and thereby the age of the human fam- 
ily is put back many thousands of years more 
than the four thousand years before Christ, 
which the Bible narratives assign it. The 
Diluvial Period must have lasted a very 
long time — a fact proved by the traces of ex- 
tensive glaciation on the northern portion of 
the earth, which scientists have lately been 
obliged to take as four periods with three in- 
tervals. Each of these three intervals has not 
only left numerous traces of a wealth of mam- 
malia, but also indisputable traces of human ex- 
istence in the form of remains of skeletons and 
countless numbers of human imiplements made 
of stones or bones and other materials, so that 
one can speak even of a development of Euro- 
pean civilization in these intervals. All three 
intervals, to judge from the material from which 
these implements are made^ belong to the older 
Stone Age, The later Stone Age, as well as 
the Bronze and Iron Ages, is of subsequent 
date. From the first of the intervals we have 



26 The Divinity Within Us. 

great rough-hewn almond-shaped stone imple- 
ments, and again little darts and tools, on which, 
however, no trace of any art has yet been found ; 
we have also the highly important human skull 
and skeleton remains, which show the full hu- 
man type in the size and shape of the hollow of 
the skull, and, in addition to that, peculiarities 
of shape that remind one of characteristics in 
the skeleton of the modern anthropoid ape. . . . 
The second intervening Glacial Period had a 
colder climate than the first, as is shown by the 
appearance of the hairy mammoth, with its thick, 
shaggy skin, and the shaggy rhinoceros. It is 
the heyday of the mammoth and of the wald 
horse, which somewhat resembled the horse of 
to-day. While the human remains of this period, 
among which those belonging to Spy and Engis 
in Belgium ought to be named, remind us some- 
what less of those lower forms; yet the imple- 
ments of this period are distinguished by draw- 
ings and cuttings in bone and ivory, and also by 
really striking drawings of animals on the walls 
of the caves. Finally, in the third and colder 
intervening Glacial Period, the typical Reindeer 
Age, the outline drawings on bones, especially 
on the antlers of the reindeer, and the artistic 
carvings attain a yet higher pitch of excellence, 



Origin of the Human Body, 27 

while the human skulls of this period are in no 
way inferior to the skulls of human beings of 
to-day." 

Thus the students of this question feel cer- 
tain that our human ancestors came into exist- 
ence from thirty thousand to one hundred thou- 
sand years ago. And when they bring his skel- 
eton and his tools and his art from the strata 
of those distant geological periods^ they compel 
even our unwilling belief in man's ancient 
origin. 



II. 
ORIGIN AND DEFINITION OF MAN. 



The directest manifestation of Deity to man is in 
His own image — that is, in man. — Rttskin. 

The soul, of origin divine, 

God's glorious image, freed from clay, 

In heaven's eternal sphere shall shine 
A star of day! 

— James Montgomery. 



CHAPTER IL 
Origin and Definition of Man, 

In so far as man is an animal, he is construct- 
ed on the animal principle, with such variations 
as are needed for his dominance and higher life. 
The individual characteristics in every animal 
species are suited to its life and habits. Man is 
no exception to this rule. While the same gen- 
eral anatomical principle runs through all, we 
readily see the fitness in the slight variations 
that result in fins for the fish, wings for the 
bird, claws for the tiger, hoofs for the horse, and 
hands for the man. The upright position of 
man's body, which lifts his face from the dust 
and turns his eyes to the heavens, is indispensa- 
ble if he is to think and worship. 

The sam.e elements enter into man's physical 
structure that enter other material organisms. 
Matter is of few elements. We easily recognize 
differences between an oak and a cedar, between 
a cedar and a rose, between a rose and a bird, 
between a bird and a fish, between a fish and 
a beast, between a beast and a man; yet they 



32 The Divinity Within Us. 

all — tree, bird, fish, beast, man — spring from 
masses of protoplasm, in which the finest micro- 
scopic search and the most careful chemical anal- 
ysis find no difference. The tree starts from a 
structureless protoplasm exactly like that from 
which all animals have their beginnings. As the 
builder takes the same materials and constructs 
here a trellis for a vine, here a kennel for a 
dog, here a house for merchandise, here an ocean 
steamer, here a royal residence, and here a 
cathedral for divine worship ; so, in some such 
manner, the Maker of all things takes the same 
materials and constructs here a w^orm, here a 
fish, here a bird, here a tree, here a beast, and 
here a man. As the twenty-six letters of our lan- 
guage may be combined by human intelligence 
into a vast and rich literature, so the sixty-four 
or more material elements may be combined by di- 
vine intelligence into all the myriad forms we see. 

Architecture is an evolution. Literature is 
an evolution. Man is an evolution. As we trace 
the development of human skill in architecture, 
as we discover the progress of human thought in 
literature^ so we see the unfolding purpose of God 
in the long process of building the human body. 

But man is not merely an ancient animal. 
Many animal species still extant are entitled to 



Origin and Definition of Man. 33 

more honor on that score than he. There is a 
vaster difference between man and the highest 
animal than between the highest animal and an 
insensate clod. 

The clod is dead matter. It has no life nor 
sense nor energy. It is perfectly helpless in 
the hands of all forces that play upon it. It can- 
not resist nor follow. In a strict sense, it is 
without law. "Anything that cannot act for it- 
self cannot be under law or have law." 

An animal is this clod wonderfully refined and 
possessed with that mysterious thing called life. 
It has also the unexplainable senses of sight, 
hearing, touch, taste, and smell. It has instincts 
of self-gratification and instincts of self-preser- 
vation. It hungers and thirsts, and has internal 
organs that carry on the processes of digestion 
and assimilation. It has external organs suited 
to its low habits. It may even have a degree 
of intelligence which is non-progressive in its 
species. Its life is entirely selfish and earthy, 
and perishes with its body. 

A man is this animal brought to the highest 
physical development. He has all the necessary 
animal organs, only varied and developed for his 
peculiar and higher use. He has all the animal 
senses, appetites, and instincts. His whole phys- 
3 



34 The Divinity Within Us. 

ical organism pulses with an animal life that is 
as insecure and almost as brief as that in any 
other animal. This human animal perishes with 
its life, appetites, senses, and instincts just as 
have a million generations of the lower orders. 
But possessing this human animal is a soul im- 
mortal capable of thought and worship. Even 
while associated with the human animal, he may 
live more outside it than within it, more for 
something else than for it. When he lays it 
aside finally, it is to enter free and unincum- 
bered fully into the environment that ministers 
most to his life. 

If we seek the origin of this intellectual and 
spiritual being called man, we need not turn to 
the animal world. He has no likeness nor kin- 
ship there. The temporary body which he graces 
belongs in that kingdom, but man belongs to a 
kingdom above. There is no other theory of 
man's origin so consistent, so accordant with all 
indications, so in keeping with the known facts, 
as that presented in the brief and general state- 
ment of Moses : "And Jehovah God formed man 
of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his 
nostrils the breath of life; and man became a 
living soul.'' 

The Soul, with his infinite possibilities of 



Origin and Definition of Man, 35 

thought, memory, will, faith, love, and growth ; 
with his high spiritual senses of conscience and 
accountability and immortality ; with his ideas of 
God and the chief end of his own being, came 
right out from God. He is the offspring of 
God. He is the child of God in a close, actual, 
literal sense. God is man's Father, and that in 
no strained, figurative, or poetic sense ; but truly, 
naturally, and necessarily. 

Other theories of the origin of Man sound 
strange, unnatural, and impossible; but it does 
not seem strange that children should be born 
unto God. Once believe that God is^ as we are 
compelled to do, and it seems the proper, the 
natural, the thing to be expected, that other spir- 
its should proceed from the Father; that chil- 
dren akin to him and like him should be born 
in his house. 

This child is in the image of his Father. To 
quote Mr. Huxley: 'The one end to which, in 
all living beings, the formative impulse is tend- 
ing — the one scheme which the archseus of the 
old speculators strives to carry out — seems to be 
to mold the offspring into the likeness, of the 
parent. It is the first great law of reproduction 
that the offspring tends to resemble its parent or 
parents more closely than anything else," 



36 The Divinity Within Us. 

Says Mr. Ruskin : "It cannot be supposed that 
the bodily shape of man resembles or resembled 
any bodily shape in Deity. The likeness must 
therefore be or have been in the soul. Had it 
wholly passed away, and the divine soul been 
altered into a soul brutal or diabolic, I suppose 
we should have been told of the change. But 
we are told of nothing of the kind. The verse 
still stands as if for our use and trust. It was 
only death which was to be our punishment. 
Not change. So far as we live, the image is 
still there; defiled, if you will; broken, if you 
will; all but effaced, if you will, by death 
and the shadow of it. But not changed. We 
are not made now in any other image than 
God's." 

'^For thou hast made him but little lower than 
God, and crownest him with glory and honor. 
Thou madest him to have dominion over the 
works of thy hands ; thou hast put all things un- 
der his feet.'' There is nothing lacking in his 
divinity but stature. Man has exactly the same 
attributes that God has. In man these attributes 
are not highly developed, or they are dormant, 
or they are broken, or they are distorted. Sin 
has wrought this ruin. The supreme need of 
man is to have these attributes repaired, waked 



Origin and Definition of Man. 37 

up, and developed. The goal of our intensest 
longing and highest endeavor is named in the 
yearning cry of King David : 'T shall be satis- 
fied, when I awake, with thy likeness/' Man is 
of one substance w^ith the Father. He is a prince 
in the royal family of the King of kings. ''A 
man, for aye removed from the developed brute ; 
a god, though in the germ.'' 

We have been taught to say that God is in- 
finite and that man is finite. We have said it 
over so often that we half believe that we are 
hopelessly hedged about. In what respect is 
man finite? In what is he limited? Where is 
the line he must not and cannot cross? Has 
anything ever successfully opposed his will? 
Has he yet attained his possibilities in any direc- 
tion? Does he not seem capable of infinite de- 
velopment in every direction? Why say he is 
finite? Who knows his metes and bounds? Who 
know^s the utmost possibilities of any one of his 
divine attributes? What man has gone as far 
as any man can go ? Have any of the inventors, 
discoverers, painters, sculptors, poets, fictionists, 
statesmen, philosophers, scientists, or saints 
touched that impassable wall that limits us 
round? Man has broken through ten thousand 
limitations, and no cord or withe has sufficed to 



3^ The Diznnity Within Us. 

bind him when he has chosen to rise; but no 
one has done his best. 

A fish or a bird or a beast may be called finite, 
for each is no more than were its ancestors back 
through a thousand generations. The first lion 
was as noble a specimen as the last. There is 
no progress among the lower animals. They 
build their nests, seek their food, and care for 
their young just as their kind have always done. 
They have the habits of their kind thousands of 
years ago. They have learned nothing in build- 
ing, hunting, or caring for their young. This is 
not true of man. 

Man has been progressive through all his his- 
tory. Every task he has performed has taught 
him a lesson. He has had new ideas, new meth- 
ods, new tools for each generation. Attempts 
have been made to point out limits for invention 
and discovery, but science has repeatedly broken 
over and gone beyond. Before the middle of 
last century, Auguste Comte declared that it 
was impossible for man to determine the com- 
position of the stars. He was sure that the 
millions and trillions of miles that intervened 
measured an impassable gulf even for the swift 
dash of human sight and the tireless pinions of 
the human mind. It was but a few years later 



Origin and Definition of Man. 39 

that the challenge was taken up. The spectro- 
scope was invented. It was thoroughly tested 
in the analysis of earth substances, and found 
true. Then with ease science reached across the 
gulf of space, and by this simple instrument be- 
gan to determine with exactness the elements 
entering into the composition of the most dis- 
tant stars. The inventions, discoveries, and 
achievements of man in every direction to-day 
are more rapid, astounding, and revolutionizing 
than ever before. All barriers have been ig- 
nored. A thousand impossibilities have been 
laughed at. Men are just now breathing free- 
dom and girding themselves for the race. We 
cannot afford to say yet that man is finite. 

Man's capabilities in the world of thought and 
action proclaim him divine. He may become 
keenly sensitive to all beauty. He may appre- 
ciate the richest harmonies of both light and 
sound. He combines colors with the skill of a 
Raphael. He sees angels in stone and chisels 
them out with the hand of a Michael Angelo. 
He takes the simple elements of language and 
organizes them into the sublime epics of Homer, 
Dante, and Milton. He takes the voice of a 
man, the trill of a bird, the report of a rifle, the 
whispers of a breeze, the roar of a storm, the 



40 The Divinity Within Us. 

rumble of thunder, the sprinkle and pour of rain, 
the din of battle, the pipe of reeds, the blare of 
trumpets, the twang of strings, and works them 
into the enrapturing musical conceptions of a 
Paderewski, Wagner, Mozart, or Verdi. He 
hews the unsightly granite and the rough marble 
from the mountain side and transforms them 
into the Alhambra, Westminster Abbey, St. 
Peter's, and the Taj Mahal. He seizes the 
wizard forces by which the universe was built 
up, and harnesses them into his own service; so 
that they sow his fields, reap his harvest, freight 
his products, grind his wheat, saw his timber, 
weave his cloth, extract his ores, print his books, 
paint his pictures, take his messages, and give 
him swift and easy passage whithersoever he 
desires. He follows the paths of worlds, studies 
them, measures them, weighs them, and, along- 
all the trails of light, ''thinks God's thoughts 
after him.'' Everywhere ''he dares the infinite 
in time and space and truth." 

If man had not sprung from God, he could 
not be drawn to God. Even while in bondage to 
sin and dominated by a legion of devils, man is 
dissatisfied, rebellious, ashamed, feels his dis- 
grace, has impulses to something worthier, hun- 
gers, thirsts, feels after God. The eagle with 



Origin and Definition of Man. 41 

his wings clipped, his foot chained, and held 
against his will from his native sky is a fit 
symbol of the man bound in sin. Sin is beneath 
the dignity of man. A life of sin is as unsuited 
to men as to seraphim. It is the calamity of 
human life. It is the sad condition that pro- 
foundly moves the thrones, principalities, and 
powers of heaven in man's behalf; so that upon 
the field of his bondage^, suffering, and disgrace 
invisible but almight}' hosts strike for his liberty 
and in his defense. 

Freed from the weights and sins that beset 
him, and unchained from the body of death, 
man's tendency is toward the high level of God 
where he had his origin. Rid of this incum- 
brance, he seeks and finds continvtally a higher 
life. His path is upward. He is homeward 
bound. He is seeking his Father's face. He 
goes up expecting to see his Father face to face 
and to be like him. As he toils on he repeats 
over and over to himself : ''In my Father's house 
are many mansions." All these better motives 
and upward strivings and feelings after God 
are evidences of man's divine origin. They dis- 
tinguish man from all other earthly creatures. 
"The fact that he aspires is a prophecy that he 
is heir apparent of a throne." 



42 The Divinity Within Us. 

Man's very temptation to sin, the art and per- 
sistency of diabolical forces and influences after 
him, prove his infinite worth and divine rela- 
tionship. Satan does not so beset any other be- 
ing. He is God's enemy, but impotent against 
the Almighty. He knows the relation between 
God and man, and sees that any measure of tri- 
umph against God that may be his momentary 
reward must be won in his diabolical attacks 
upon humanity. A blow at man is a blow at 
the heart of God. When the devil attempts to 
ruin man, he is simply striking at Divinity. 

If man were not divine, the paths of godliness 
would not be suited to his feet ; but he finds them 
ways of pleasantness and peace, and there is 
nothing strained or unnatural for him in a godly 
walk. There is a striking likeness betw^een the 
terms ''manliness'' and ''godliness." Men striv- 
ing for a high life look unto God. Moral pre- 
cepts and codes of righteousness laid down for 
man point him unto God. That indisputably 
Divine Man said: "Follow me." Being of no 
mean origin, but a child of God, the require- 
ments of the Decalogue are not excessive, the 
demands of the Sermon on the Mount are not 
exorbitant, and to do God's will on the earth 
as the angels do it in heaven is not superhuman. 



Origin and Definition of Man. 43 

Having such an origin, such latent godHke qual- 
ities, and such a possible destiny, it is not sur- 
prising that man's conduct is prescribed in terms 
of the Law, his life projected upon the plane of 
the gospel, and that his examples are no meaner 
beings than cherubim and seraphim. 

Man can never attain the stature of his Fa- 
ther, but the stature of Jesus Christ is set up 
for his measure. He may not attain the fullness 
of that, but he is not allowed a shorter model, 
and is condemmed if he fails to ''press toward 
the mark.'' This gives room for eternal prog- 
ness. Renan has said: ''Jesus is the highest of 
the pillars that show man whence he came and 
whither he ought to tend. In him is condensed 
all that is good and exalted in our nature." The 
Christ character is proof that man and God are 
of one essence, and intimately related as child 
and Father. The Christ character is not a blend- 
ing of two distinct natures, but is one unmixed 
nature revealing the identity of the human and 
divine nature. Along all the lines of the Christ 
perfection, we can find no point at which we are 
allowed to fix the limits of human possibilities. 
"In every respect," says Strauss, "Jesus stands 
in the first line of those who have developed the 
ideal of humanity." 



44 The Divinity Within Us. 

Man is the only but the sufficient reason for 
all the wonders of creation. Alfred Russel Wal- 
lace, in his remarkable book, ''Man's Place in the 
Universe/' almost demonstrates that the earth 
is the only inhabited planet in the universe. 
Man is the king here. All other created things 
find their ultimate in him. They are inferior to 
man, and were made to minister to him. They 
do not and cannot serve any being above man, 
except as they serve man. God is self-sufficient, 
and does not personally need anything he has 
created. In a strict sense, it is impossible for 
any creature to render any service or make any 
gift to God. But man needs the whole minis- 
tering creation if he would attain his prescribed 
stature. His environment contains nothing 
more than he needs, and^ thank God, nothing 
less. Literally, all things are his — from pebbles 
to planets, from molecules to oceans, from in- 
sects to angels — and are to be brought under 
tribute, ''that the man of God may be perfect, 
thoroughly furnished unto all good works.'' To 
the building up of his character, man is to bring 
under contribution the earth and the infinite 
heavens. Paul is to add something; Apollos, 
something; Cephas, something; the world, some- 
thing; life, something; death, something; things 



Origin and Definition of Man. 45 

present, something; things to come, something; 
all sheep and oxen and the beasts of the field 
and the fowl of the air and the fish of the sea 
and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the 
sea — all are to add something. Because it is all 
his, man has been given dominion over nature 
and authorized to subdue it to his own use. 

When the greatest Christian preacher sought 
to give the Athenians a better notion of God, he 
said: ''Forasmuch then as we are the offspring 
of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead 
is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by 
art and man's device.^' Ruskin's strong words 
are good at this point : ''But this poor, miserable 
me! Is this, then, all the book I have got to 
read about God in? Yes, truly so. No other 
book, nor fragment of book, than that will you 
ever find; no velvet-bound missal nor frankin- 
censed manuscript; nothing hieroglyphic nor 
cuneiform; papyrus and pyramid are alike silent 
on this matter; nothing in the clouds above nor 
in the earth beneath. That flesh-bound volume 
is the only revelation that is, that was, or that 
can be. In that is the image of God painted ; in 
that is the law of God written; in that is the 
promise of God revealed. Know thyself, for 
through thyself only thou canst know God.'' 



46 The Divinity Within Us, 

Of course the Scriptures put a high estimate 
upon man; but it is agreeable to find that in 
fixing man's high place the facts gathered in 
every branch of science are as eloquent as the 
impassioned and inspired speech of prophets 
and apostles. Geology, evolution, and astron- 
omy attach as much dignity to man and put as 
high an estimate upon him as inspired words 
ever did; for the facts of science are also the 
words of God. 

Geologists are agreed that the earth was many 
millions of years in preparation for man. Many 
of the most eminent say the earth is at least one 
hundred million years old, and a few say it is 
very much older. As this class of scientists 
view it, the earth has been gradually developed 
and prepared for man through periods of un- 
thinkable lengths. Since the old globe was 
formed and cooled, it has been in the hands of 
titanic forces that have carried it through revo- 
lutions, upheavals, subsidings, and other catas- 
trophic throes. It has been influenced by every 
orb in the heavens until its atmosphere, tempera- 
ture, seasons, tides, day, night, and year are just 
such as the needs of man require. If God has 
thus operated these world-building forces upon 
our earth through a hundred million years to 



Origin and Definition of Man. 47 

make it ready for man, what words can proclaim 
louder the worth of man ? 

Evolutionists make man the culmination of 
the evolutionary processes. This scheme also re- 
quires the vast reaches of time that the geologist 
claims for the age of the earth. During that 
time life has been developing gradually and or- 
derly toward its final and highest expression in 
man. There have been millions of species and 
millions of individuals in each species. These 
have developed, the higher from the lower, 
through the agency of a million different forma- 
tive influences in food, light, temperature, ex- 
ercise, and other environs. These millions of 
millions of influences, through these millions of 
years, in these millions of species and multiplied 
millions of individuals, have been working to- 
ward man as their culmination. The fittest has 
survived, been conserved, brought forward, and 
concentrated in man as the noblest product of 
the evolutionary scheme. The best in every long 
geological period has been treasured up, im- 
proved, and refined for the making of man. 
Such is the evolutionist's high estimate of the 
value of man. 

The astronomer agrees to this high estimate. 
It is estimated that there are one hundred mil- 



48 The Divinity Within Us. 

lion visible stars in the universe, besides the 
dark stars supposed to be even more numerous 
than the bright ones. Each star is a sun similar 
to our own, and it is probable that many of them, 
if not all, have planetary systems circling about 
them. ''The size of our sun is such that if the 
earth were at its center not only would there be 
ample space for the moon's orbit, but sufficient 
for another satellite 190,000 miles beyond the 
moon, all revolving inside the sun." The sun is 
92,736,000 miles distant from the earth. The 
next nearest star is 271,400 times farther away. 
A ray of light travels at the rate of 184,000 
miles per second; so requires four and one-third 
years to reach us from the nearest star, and five 
hundred years to reach us from the farthest. 
Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace argues to what he 
believes a demonstration that our earth is near 
the center of the universe, and the only inhab- 
ited orb among the several hundred millions. 
Think of such a number of suns and planets cir- 
cling about us at such distances to secure that 
balance of forces and influences necessary to 
make our earth habitable ! Think of man as the 
highest being on earth, and for whom universal 
suns and planets move in their orbits with math- 



Origin and Definition of Man. 49 

ematical precision ! Such is the astronomer's 
estimate of man's value. 

The geologist says that God so loved man 
that he worked a hundred million years to pre- 
pare the earth as a temporary residence. The 
evolutionist says that God so loved man that 
he spent another hundred million years in de- 
veloping the body he was to use during his brief 
earthly residence. The astronomer says that 
God so loved man that he put his little world 
at the center of the universe of a hundred mil- 
lion suns. Jesus Christ says that God so loved 
man that he gave his only-begotten Son to die 
for him. What an agreement among the four 
greatest witnesses ! It must be true. 

If all men were what the best have been, there 
would be no difficulty in believing man to be a 
son of God. If all had been great as have some 
scholars, inventors, discoverers, painters, sculp- 
tors, poets, believers, priests, prophets, apostles, 
philosophers, statesmen, and kings of history, we 
could have thought of them easily as a race of 
gods. We should judge the race by its best 
representatives, and not by its worst. The small, 
the unknown, the multitude, have had the same 
inherent qualities, the same marvelous possibili- 
ties, as the few great ones that have gained a 
4 



50 The Divinity Within Us. 

permanent setting in the halls of fame. We 
have been deceived as to our origin and de- 
frauded of our birthrights. 

It is said that Alexander grew up with the 
full realization that he was the son of the king 
and heir to the throne. He fully appreciated 
his rights and privileges, prospects and possi- 
bilities, as a prince. Suppose men thought of 
themselves continually as the sons of God and 
his heirs ! 



III. 
MATTER AND SPIRIT, 



Science discovers natural laws and processes ; and 
if God is really the ruler of the universe, the laws and 
processes of nature are only the divine purposes and 
methods. Science is therefore as truly a revelation 
from God and of God as are the Scriptures, as really 
a revelation of his will as was the Decalogue, and one 
which is to have as real a part in the coming of his 
kingdom among men as the New Testament. — Josiah 
Strong. 



CHAPTER III. 

Matter and Spirit. 

Man is as truly a spirit as God is a spirit, but 
he is a spirit incarnated. He is a spirit not only 
caught in the meshes of flesh and blood, but also 
pressed upon every hand by a material universe 
which some have regarded as infinite in extent. 
Man is largely dependent upon his material en- 
vironment, and his five senses are intended to 
put him in communication with it. The material 
exists only for the spirit. It is the food God 
has put in convenient form and place for his in- 
fant children. Upon this material food man 
mainly feeds through his first threescore years 
and ten. It not only responds to the cravings 
of the physical nature, but it also largely sup- 
plies the intellectual and moral natures. In 
fact, the material is mainly intended to build up 
these higher natures. It carries the physical 
nature only to a very small stature and to very 
limited power ; but there has been found no limit 
to its possible additions to mind and heart. We 
know not to what stature and power of soul the 



54 The Divinity Within Us. 

material may minister. The greatest men the 
world ever saw drew until death large supplies 
from the material. 

We are accustomed to disinguish between the 
spiritual and the material. This distinction is, 
at least, a convenience of thought ; and, no doubt, 
it is true enough for general use; but there may- 
be less difference between the material world 
and the spiritual world than we usually suppose. 
Since the material world so powerfully builds 
up the spiritual nature, it must have in it spir- 
itual elements. We partake of the nature of 
that upon which we feed. The material may 
still be spiritual put up in another form. 

Scientists generally hold the theory of the in- 
destructibility of matter. If they mean to say 
that man cannot destroy matter, we raise no dis- 
pute. Man has damaged a good deal of matter; 
but if he has annihilated any, the fact has not 
been discovered. A recent experimenter thinks 
that he has succeeded in the annihilation of a 
very little; but the scientific world seems very 
little troubled over the announcement. That 
man would be entirely too bold who would say 
that God cannot change matter into something 
that is not matter. Man can almost do that. 
There are three states of matter — solid, liquid, 



Matter and Spirit, 55 

and gaseous. Any substance may exist in any 
one of these states. Man can convert the soHds 
into Hquids, and the liquids into vapors and 
gases as invisible as air. He can also reduce air 
and other gases to liquid, and these liquids to 
solids. The amount of heat that matter holds 
determines in which of these three states it is to 
be classed. 

There are two doctrines of matter that are 
old: (i) The doctrine of the infinite divisibility 
of bodies, and (2) the atomic theory. The first 
theory is that there is no limit to the possible 
division of bodies except man's inability to see 
and handle the infinitesimal parts. The atomic 
theory is that matter is made up of atoms, and 
that each atom is an indivisible point, possessing 
a certain mass, and having position in space. 
We are told that two million molecules of hydro- 
gen in a row would occupy a millimeter, nearly 
two-fifths of an inch ; and that two hundred mil- 
lion million million molecules weigh one milli- 
gram, or about fifteen-thousandths of a grain 
avoirdupois. Until recently these hydrogen 
atoms were supposed to be the smallest particles 
in the material world; but now it is discovered 
that the ''cathode rays, together with the pecul- 
iar emanations from uranium, polonium, and 



56 The Divinity Within Us. 

radium, consist of particles of matter having but 
1-1,000 the mass of the hydrogen atom/' Odors 
are said to be material. ''A grain of musk will 
scent a room for many years by constantly send- 
ing forth into the air a dust of musk. Though 
the number of particles that escape must be 
countless, yet they are so small that the original 
grain does not lose perceptibly in weight." Air 
is proved to be matter by the facts that it is 
impenetrable, it exerts pressure, and has weight. 
Air excludes other matter from space which it 
occupies. It exerts a pressure of fourteen and 
one-half pounds per square inch upon all sur- 
faces. One hundred cubic inches of dry air 
weigh thirty-one and one-third grains, which is 
eight hundred and thirteen and one-half times 
lighter than water. The earth is only one mil- 
lion and two hundred thousand times the weight 
of its surrounding atmosphere. Air being in- 
visible, we can know it only by its motion, 
weight, and pressure. If it were the same tem- 
perature everywhere, it would have no motion. 
If all centers of gravity were broken up, it would 
have no density nor weight nor pressure. How 
could we know of its existence? 

Science assumes that there is some medium 
filling interplanetary space. This medium is 



Matter and Spirit, 57 

called ether. ''We cannot see, hear, feel, taste, 
smell, weigh, nor measure it/' We know of its 
existence only by certain phenomena, as of light, 
which we cannot account for except on the 
hypothesis that this ethereal medium exists. '^Al- 
though spoken of as a fluid, it acts like a solid, 
a true jelly, transmitting all vibrations communi- 
cated to it almost perfectly. In proportion to 
its density it is exceedingly rigid, a veritable 
elastic solid; and so great an authority as Lord 
Kelvin has even suggested that the medium may 
be occasionally broken or cracked by the violent 
shocks to which it is subjected by material 
bodies." For all purposes for which science as- 
sumes it this impalpable medium must be mate- 
rial. Yet it is not affected by gravitation. It 
is equally dense in all parts. It is not subject to 
any of the laws of matter that we know. 

Even light is coming to be regarded as mate- 
rial. Newton's corpuscular theory of light has 
long been abandoned, but some scientists are 
coming to believe that something like it is true. 
According to this theory, light consists of very 
small particles moving at the speed of 184,000 
miles per second. Particles one thousand times 
smaller than the hydrogen atom have been found 
in the cathode ray and the rays emanating from 



58 The Divinity Within Us. 

such light-yielding substances as polonium, 
radium, and uranium. These rays have a tend- 
ency to push away the object they strike, as if 
it were struck by a stream of particles flying at 
great speed. Although radium gives oflf its par- 
ticles of light at such an enormous speed. Pro- 
fessor Bach, of Berlin, gives as his verdict that 
''it would take a million years to destroy the 
luminosity of a piece only a quarter of an inch 
square." It has been demonstrated that sunlight 
exerts pressure. The total luminous pressure of 
the sun upon the earth is estimated to be about 
one hundred thousand tons. There is a ''push'' 
in the sun's radiant heat and light which is equal 
to about 6-1,000 of a grain upon every three feet 
and three inches square. 

Benjamin Franklin supposed electricity to be 
a fluid consisting of minute corpuscles. His the- 
ory has been rather discredited, but scientists 
are being driven to it again. They are beginning 
to say that electricity is very widespread. "We 
may suppose that it forms a part of all kinds of 
matter in the normal state, and that the heat and 
light which have to be applied to metals are only 
required to get the corpuscles out of the metal, 
and that in the metal itself, 'even under normal 
conditions, there are corpuscles moving freely 



Matter and Spirit. 59 

about." It is not yet determined what these 
tiny corpuscles are. ''Some physicists believe 
they are not matter in any ordinary acceptation 
of the term, but are, so to speak, merely disem- 
bodied charges of electricity. So far as ex- 
perience has hitherto gone, electric charges are 
known only as united to matter ; but Dr. Johnson 
Stoney and Dr. Larmor have both speculated on 
the properties of such charges if isolated, which 
by the former have been named electrons. Such 
a charge would possess inertia, even though at- 
tached to no matter; and, in fact, the increase in 
the inertia of a body due to electrification has 
been calculated by both Prof. Thompson and by 
Mr. Oliver Heaviside. The conception has ac- 
cordingly been advanced that all inertia is elec- 
trical, and that matter, as we know it, is built 
up of interlocked positive and negative elec- 
trons. If in any mass of matter it were possible 
to separate these electrons, the matter would dis- 
appear, and there would remain merely two enor- 
mous charges of electricity." 

In regard to radiant matter, light-giving met- 
als, cathode, X^ and Becquerel rays, which are 
now bewildering the scientists, M. Gustave le 
Bon, of Paris, "assures us that these new ideas 
are not several things, but one thing, and that 



6o The Divinity Within Us. 

they all of them point to a form of matter spread 
throughout the world — indeed, but so inconceiva- 
bly minute that it becomes not matter, but force." 
He supposes that the atoms of chemistry which 
have been thought to be indestructible and in- 
solvable are really universes comprising millions 
of infinitely small particles. Each of these in- 
finitesimal particles is charged with neutral elec- 
tricity. In many circumstances these particles 
"split themselves up into negative and positive 
ions, each of them bearing an enormous electric 
charge." 

Thus, as we push our inquiries back, we find 
it hard to determine where the material world 
ceases and the spiritual world begins. In its 
final constitution this solid material world seems 
as immaterial as a spiritual world. Sometime 
it may be demonstrated that the ultimate consti- 
tution of matter is the same as the fundamental 
substance of spirit. It is more difficult to con- 
ceive the eternity of matter in its present state 
than to conceive the eternity of God. It is easier 
to conceive the eternity of God than to conceive 
that he had a beginning. If we can conceive 
the eternity of God, it is easier to conceive his 
expressing the whole universe of the material 
out of his own infinite spiritual resources — con- 



Matter and Spirit. 6i 

creting all things visible and tangible out of his 
own invisible and intangible nature. This seems 
to be the doctrine of revelation, and the late dis- 
coveries of science tend to confirm it. ''Matter 
is only mind in an opaque condition, and all 
beauty is but a symbol of spirit.'' 

Solids into liquids, liquids into vapors, vapors 
into ether. Which is the more material, ether 
or spirit? Neither can be seen, heard, felt, tast- 
ed, smelled, weighed, nor measured. Suppose 
that spirit and matter, so vastly different as they 
are in their usual manifestations, are but dif- 
ferent forms of the same thing? Suppose, ig- 
norant as w^e are of both matter and spirit, we 
should think of matter as a concretion of spir- 
itual energy? ''The physical universe is but a 
visible expression of the power and thought of 
God.'' God existed from eternity. Before the 
material universe appeared, only God was — "I 
AM." God created, manifested, concreted, ex- 
pressed, the stupendous universe of the material 
out of the vaster universe of the spiritual; so 
that "things which are seen were made of things 
which do not appear." It must be true that 
God brought into view all material manifesta- 
tions by an omnipotent fiat — "Let there be!" 
Spirit is the original and normal state of matter. 



62 The Divinity Within Us. 

Matter can be eternal only in the spiritual state ; 
''for the things which are seen are temporal ; but 
the things which are not seen are eternal/' May 
we not suppose that when the heavens are rolled 
together as a scroll, and suns, moons, planets, 
and comets disappear, that they merely revert 
to original spirit or energy ? ''The heavens shall 
pass away with a great noise, and the elements 
shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and 
the works that are therein shall be burned up." 
Heat is the power always used for volatiHzing 
substances. 

Says Dr. Geikie: "The vast universe, embra- 
cing heavens above heavens, stretching out into 
the Infinite — with constellations anchored on the 
vast expanse like tiny islet clusters on the bound- 
less ocean — is one great miracle. It was won- 
derful to create, but to sustain creation is, itself, 
to create anew, each moment. Suns and planets, 
living creatures in their endless races, all that 
the round sky of each planet covers — seas, air, 
sweeping valleys, lofty mountains, and the mil- 
lion wonders of the brain and heart and life 
of their innumerable populations, have no se- 
curity, each moment, that they shall commence 
another, except in the continued expenditure of 
fresh creative energy.'' 



Matter and Spirit, 63 

It is true, according to Scripture, that great 
and intelligent spirits, such as angels and God, 
can appear at will in physical form in the midst 
of a room having all means of human ingress 
closed, and that they can as readily vanish, leav- 
ing no material trace behind them. On two oc- 
casions bread and fish miraculously multiplied in 
the hands of Jesus until a few loaves and fishes, 
not enough for five men, were made to feed and 
satisfy several thousand people. The people 
were hungry. They were not hypnotized and 
deceived into believing they had been fed. The 
fragments, gathered in baskets after the ample 
feast, made many times the amount Jesus began 
with. 

The widow with whom Elijah boarded during 
the great drought in Ahab's reign had only 
enough oil and meal to make one small cake 
when she gave lodging to the prophet of the 
Lord. In some strange way the meal and the 
oil were multiplied for the daily needs of that 
widow, her son, and the prophet for many days. 

Another widow came to Elisha in great dis- 
tress. She was in debt, and her merciless cred- 
itor threatened to sell her two sons for bond- 
men. ''And Elisha said unto her, What shall I 
do for thee? tell me, what hast thou in the 



64 The Divinity Within Us. 

house? And she said, Thine handmaid hath not 
anything in the house, save a pot of oil. Then 
he said, Go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all 
thy neighbors, even empty vessels; borrow not 
a few. And when thou art come in^ thou shalt 
shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons, and 
shalt pour out into all those vessels, and thou shalt 
set aside that which is full. So she went from 
him, and shut the door upon her and upon her 
sons, who brought the vessels to her; and she 
poured out. And it came to pass, when the ves- 
sels were full, that she said unto her son. Bring 
me yet a vessel. And he said unto her, There is 
not a vessel more. And the oil stayed. Then 
she came and told the man of God. And he said. 
Go, sell the oil^ and pay thy debt, and live thou 
and thy children of the rest." 

Here are four miracles of creation, two 
from the Old Testament and two from the New. 
In the presence of human witnesses, things 
which are seen were made of things which do 
not appear. The bread and fish, though created 
out of the usual process, were as real as any 
that man ever ate. The oil was genuine and 
pure enough to pay a debt. It remained in the 
vessels until used in the regular ways for cook- 
ing and healing. The amount created in each 



Matter and Spirit. 65 

instance was enough to prove that its production 
was no sleight-of-hand performance to deceive, 
and that the possibihties of this creative power 
are unHmited. Oceans of oil and continents of 
bread could be produced by the same power and 
in the same manner. Miracles like these are 
Gad's reiterated statements as to how he made 
all things. 

We might not miss the truth if we should say 
that all things, in their original and normal state, 
are spirit — stones, metals, woods, liquids, vapors, 
men, and angels — but we make no serious mis- 
take in calling all things that can be apprehended 
by any of the five senses material, and in re- 
garding all things that are apprehended directly 
by the conscience, without the mediation of the 
senses, as spirituaL Whatever the degree of in- 
timacy, the two manifestations are distinct 
enough to merit different names. 

Between the two manifestations, matter and 
spirit, there are vast differences. The charac- 
teristics of matter are extension, impenetrability, 
density, hardness, flexibility, elasticity, brittle- 
ness, viscosity, malleability, tenacity, capillarity, 
deadness, inertia, adhesion, cohesion, gravity, 
electricity, light, sound, taste, odor^ etc. It may 
be cut, broken, bent, twisted, poured, shaped, 

5 



66 The Divinity Within Us. 

measured, weighed, liquefied, vaporized, etc. It 
readily yields itself to all the purposes of agricul- 
ture, commerce, and art. We know of its ex- 
istence only by the five senses. 

Spirit has none of these qualities of matter. 
Its phenomena are diflferent from the phenomena 
of matter. We do not learn the qualities and 
phenomena of spirit by any of the five senses. 
We have even a more intimate acquaintance with 
them — we are conscious of them. Being spirits 
ourselves, we are not wholly dependent upon 
material media for our knowledge of the spirit- 
ual, but we know the spiritual directly. The 
facts of spirit are as real and as potent through 
our consciousness as the facts of matter through 
our senses. The facts and phenomena of spirit 
are made known to every man in the activities 
of his own spiritual faculties — intellect, sensi- 
bility, and will. We know that our own spirits 
perform the amazing feats such as to believe, 
perceive, know, remember, imagine, conceive, 
judge, infer, think, reason, arrange, understand, 
and conclude. A more wonderful fact still, if 
possible, is that we feel; we are joyous, we are 
sad, we are angry, we are disgusted, we are 
afraid, we are troubled, we are ashamed, we are 
sorry, we are weary, we hate, we love, we hope, 



Matter and Spirit, 67 

we are approved, we are thankful, we are cour- 
ageous, we reverence, we admire, we rest, and 
we are at peace. The wonder does not stop even 
here. We are conscious of the HveHest activities 
of the soul; as when we desire, prefer, decide, 
reject, accept, choose, covet, aspire, and have a 
high and holy ambition. 

Yet, in man, matter and spirit are most inti- 
mately associated — matter subject to its material 
laws, and spirit subject to its spiritual laws. An 
embryonic spirit in an embryonic body — this is 
the infancy of man. The soul develops as the 
body grows. Ordinarily, the mental faculties 
are healthy and strong if the physical organism 
is healthy and strong. To quote from Dr. Noah 
Porter : ''As these powers and capacities are sev- 
erally called into action and reach their full per- 
fection, the powers of the soul appear, one after 
another, and attain the full measure of the en- 
ergy which nature has assigned them. The low- 
er organs of the body act first in order, and 
these are developed and matured at the earliest 
period. Afterwards the higher organs are grad- 
ually matured and brought into action. After 
the body is completely developed for all its func- 
tions, it passes through certain stages of growth, 
increasing in size and strength. During these 



68 The Divinity Within Us. 

periods of development and growth the soul is 
also unfolded and matured. One power after 
another is made ready to act, and the capacity 
for the action of each is enlarged and strength- 
ened." 

This corresponding development of the soul 
with the body depends upon the same proper 
care for the soul as is bestowed upon the body. 
If the body is pampered and the soul is starved, 
the man will be materialistic and brutish. The 
body may attain its size and strength before the 
soul has been awakened even. 

We do not know God's reasons for associating 
the human spirit with a material body, but we 
venture a suggestion. The young spirit attends 
most quickly at the touch of the material. He 
apprehends most readily through the media of 
the senses. Every material thing he sees, hears, 
tastes, smells, touches, by means of the senses, 
makes impressions upon his intellect and spirit. 
At the knock of the senses, the soul is aroused 
and acts. Such communications and activities 
impart information and strength, and the soul 
gradually gains the ability to apprehend without 
the aid of the senses. The child must be awak- 
ened before he can see, hear, know. God touch- 
es his child with his hand before he whispers 



Matter and Spirit. 69 

to him. He must wake the child before he can 
reveal himself. 

Even after the conscience is aroused and ac- 
tive, the material world is a most inviting ave- 
nue of approach to God and the spiritual world. 
Thus man has two ways of knowing God — direct 
apprehension and the beautiful vision through 
nature. 

The soul seems largely dependent upon the 
body for its acquirements. The eye runs over 
landscape, sea, sky, canvas, and book to gather 
up forms and sizes and colors ; heavy laden with 
visions, this noble sense returns to the master 
spirit that sent it out. The ear attends to the 
sighing winds, the singing birds, the rumbling 
cart, the animal cry, and the voice of man; and 
its report is punctually and faithfully made to 
the spirit within. The same is true of the sense 
of touch, the sense of smell, and the sense of 
taste. They all go out on tours of exploration 
throughout the world of matter ; and whatsoever 
can be seen, heard, felt, tasted, smelled is made 
known to the spirit dwelling in the body. The 
senses surrender everything they acquire to con- 
science. Somehow, conscience mingles so inti- 
mately with the senses that we know as well the 
facts of matter revealed bv the senses as the 



yo The Divinity Within Us. 

phenomena of spirit of which we are conscious 
without the aid of the senses. 

The physical body may be considered as a ves- 
sel into which a spiritual nature is to be con- 
densed and individualized. It is the shop into 
which the materials for his upbuilding are to 
be brought, and where the work of constructing 
the man is to go on. 

Our bodily necessities are goads to spiritual 
activity ; so that our urgent and insistent physical 
needs teach and compel the spirit to act. Hu- 
man spirits have built up the present vast ma- 
terial civilization; but they have been driven to 
it by the goadings of physical demands. Main- 
ly because our flesh has compelled us, we have 
resorted to agriculture and have progressed from 
the rudest beginnings to the latest improved 
methods ; we have searched for fuel, at first pick- 
ing up that which was handiest, but finally toil- 
ing our way to the very bowels of the earth for 
coal and oil; we have made use of the metals, 
first gathering that which was exposed on the 
surface at our feet, but now braving the perils 
of sea, cold, and starvation to reach the gold 
fields of Alaska; we have made for ourselves 
the things that would not grow, at first in the 
crudest fashion with our hands, but in this day 



Matter and Spirit. 71 

by great machinery-filled manufacturing plants; 
we have moved from place to place, in the earli- 
est ages on foot to the nearest vales and streams, 
but lately in palace cars and ocean steamers to 
the most distant countries ; we have sought rem- 
edies for our physical ills, at first trying only 
the common herbs growing around us, but lately 
going to the great pharmaceutical laboratories 
with their ten thousand articles. 

In doing ten thousand things for the flesh, the 
spirit has discovered its own powers, its own 
needs, and has learned to do something for it- 
self. The spirit now demands for itself litera- 
ture, musiC;, art, a knowledge of all the sciences, 
an insight into all nature, the love, sympathy, 
and companionship of men and angels and God. 
The spirit is conscious of such urgent and such 
great needs in itself that it brings the body into 
its own service and puts all things under its own 
feet. By obedience to the flesh, it has gained 
dominion over the flesh. By unselfishly giving 
to the fleshy it soon finds itself the possessor of 
all things. 

We give here another paragraph from Dr. 
Porter : ''The soul is dependent on the body and 
on matter for its energy and activity. It sympa- 
thizes most intimately with every change in the 



72 TJie Divinity Within Us. 

body. The capacity to fix the attention so as to 
perceive clearly, to remember accurately, and to 
comprehend fully varies with the condition of 
the stomach and the action of the heart. A slight 
indisposition is incompatible with the perform- 
ance of the simplest functions of the intellect, 
and with the exercise of those emotions to which 
the soul is most wonted. An active disease dis- 
orders the imagination, filling it with offensive 
and incongruous phantasies, which the will can 
neither exclude nor regulate. The suffusion of 
the brain with blood or water disqualifies the 
soul for action of any kind, or stupefies it into 
entire unconsciousness. A change in the struc- 
ture or in the functions of the brain, or some 
lesion of the nervous system, induces the suspen- 
sion of the higher and regulating functions which 
we call insanity/' 

In spite of this intimacy of soul and body, this 
temporary dependence of spirit upon matter, and 
this present tabernacling of the incorporeal, a 
man easily distinguishes between himself and his 
body. The body is one of man's many posses- 
sions. It is the house built around him as he 
grew. The members and the senses of the body 
are so many menials placed at the beck and call 
of the man. Their business is to go out and 



Matter and Spirit. 73 

come in before him. They are to inform him of 
the material world and carry out his orders con- 
cerning it. 

So the living, intelligent spirit individualizes 
himself, consciously stands apart from his own 
body and from other spirits, and knows himself 
as a distinct person with intellectual and moral 
possibilities and responsibilities. He should feel 
an interest in his own body, in all material things, 
and in other spirits ; but his chief concern should 
be for himself, that he might measure up to his 
possibilities and responsibilities intellectually 
and morally. His ambition ought to be ex- 
pressed in two words — to be I His business in 
this body is the cultivation, instruction, furnish- 
ing, developing, and strengthening of a spirit, 
and fitting him for a higher life and nobler 
action. 

It is possible for a man to be weak, undecided, 
hesitating, indulgent, slothful, cowardly, care- 
less, and sit idly in his house among his servants. 
He does not drive them out to work, they are 
careless about bringing him information, and he 
is yet more careless about the information they 
do bring. So he lives in ignorance. He does 
not restrain and control his servants ; they run 
riot with the house and insult the man. So he 



74 The Divinity Within Us, 

lives in ttncleanness. He is indulgent toward the 
body, which runs more and more after material 
things; arid he becomes miserly, covetous, and 
materialistic. So he lives in meanness. Instead 
of repenting of his sins and quitting his loose 
conduct, he hides the matter. So he lives in 
hypocrisy. While the body eats to gluttony, 
drinks to drunkenness, indulges to lasciviousness 
and fornication, and is torn, besmeared, and 
turned topsy-turvy by base and pampered serv- 
ants who have usurped authority and control, the 
miserable man sits helpless, thoughtless, careless, 
insulted, disgraced, in some gloomy chamber. 
These servants of the soul are to be indulged 
just far enough to make them strong, vigorous, 
and capable of rendering the best service to the 
soul. Their one business is to serve the higher 
nature; but if allowed, they will damn the soul 
and plunge themselves headlong into ruin. 

'^So many sons of God inheriting the nature 
of the Almighty, why should they not use 
almighty power? To be a man means that 
I shall hold my body and my mind well in 
hand. They shall do just what I bid them do. 
And it means that I, myself — being of God's 
essence and nature, being infinite and immortal — 
will hold myself in such training that body and 



Matter and Spirit. 75 

mind shall have to obey me. I am not to be 
mastered by this appetite or that. If I bid my 
fingers open when they hold the glass, my fingers 
shall open and the glass will fall upon the floor. 
If I bid my brain think on pure things and reject 
impure, if I bid it think of things honorable and 
of good report, my brain shall obey me.'' So 
speaks Dr. E. E. Hale. 

Materialism is the coarsening of a spiritual 
nature by improper use of matter. Materialism 
endangers men in this age and in this country. 
During the nineteenth century man made a won- 
derful increase in his knowledge of the material. 
Most of the physical sciences have grown up 
during this century. Large discoveries have 
been going on in geology, chemistry, physics, 
botany, and astronomy. Men have been study- 
ing matter. This has resulted in inventions. 
The inventions are resulting in fabulous mate- 
rial wealth to this country. Where there is the 
chance of a fortune easily and quickly made, 
many men rush in; and in the scramble for the 
material there is a chance to lose sight of the 
spiritual. Dr. Josiah Strong says: '^The exclu- 
sive study of matter has to many minds made 
spirit seem unreal and cast a doubt on immor- 
tality, thus reviving the philosophy of dirt, which 



76 The Divinity Within Us, 

is as old as Democritus and Lucretius ; while the 
many who care nothing for speculative thought 
have accepted a practical materialism, which 
deems real and worth while only that which can 
be weighed and measured, bought and sold/' 

It is not enough for man to be ''the most per- 
fect animal in the world." He must not degen- 
erate into mere flesh and bloody though that flesh 
and blood be ever so decent and splendid. The 
prize fighter has a ''splendid physique," but a 
repulsive spirit. "As an animal, he is admirable ; 
as a man, he is monstrous." 

The body should be strong, beautiful, healthy, 
perfect; for it is both the tabernacle of man and 
the temple of God. Through its halls walks the 
greatest Being in the universe with his son. 
H'ere they sit down together and commune one 
with the other. Here each reveals himself to 
the other. Here they enter into covenants. Here 
they sup together. Here man studies, trains, 
strives, works, aspires, prays, worships, lives. 
Here God instructs, exercises, chastises, blesses, 
loves, inspires. Here the world of matter and 
the world of spirit converge their tribute to the 
prince of earth and heaven. To mistreat the 
body is to sin against the soul and God. 

God cares nothing for rich tabernacles, gor- 



Matter and Spirit. 77 

geous cathedrals^ magnificent temples without 
men in them. When man goes out, God goes 
out too. When man went out of Eden, God 
also went; and the fairest landscape on earth 
was allowed to run to waste and to be irrecov- 
erably lost from the sight of men. A perfect 
body is nothing worth unless it wears the ''dou- 
ble crown of intellectual and spiritual life.'' 

'There is a natural body, and there is a spir- 
itual body.'' We are living now in our natural, 
or material, bodies. When this body dies, the 
human spirit does not lose its identity. It re- 
turns to God as intact as when it dwelt in the 
flesh. All the human powers are preserved. In- 
tellectually and spiritually a man is the same 
after death as before. Thought, memory, imag- 
ination, knowledge, will, feeling, ambition, char- 
acter will cling together and constitute the same 
saved or unsaved person in the other world as in 
this. 

At the resurrection God will give every human 
spirit a "body as it hath pleased him, and to 
every seed his own body." These bodies will 
be "celestial" and "spiritual." They will be like 
the bodies of the angels that have appeared to 
men, or like the translated bodies of Moses and 
Elias, who appeared on the Mount of Trans- 



78 The Divinity Within Us. 

figuration, or like the resurrected body of Christ. 
These bodies will not be subject to the laws of 
matter. These bodies will not be material, nor 
will they be dependent upon the material. That 
body will be a stranger to the hunger, thirst, 
pain, weariness, passion, and weakness with 
which this body is so well acquainted. It will 
appreciate fully those higher delights or those 
deeper miseries of which we are now but feebly 
conscious. 

That spiritual body will be capable of express- 
ing itself, at will, in a material body that can 
be seen or touched by creatures dwelling in the 
flesh. Christ showed himself to his disciples, 
after his resurrection, in a body of flesh and 
bones that could be handled ; yet he could spirit- 
ualize his body so that it could not be seen or 
touched, and would escape through material 
walls. An angel can enter through thick walls 
into any dungeon; but when Peter was to be 
delivered from prison, the angel opened the 
gates. This would not have been necessary for 
a translated or a resurrected body. 

The spirit, like the body, develops and 
strengthens by nourishment and exercise. The 
soul must be as eager, regular, and discrimi- 
nating in seeking its appropriate food as is the 



Matter and Spirit. 79 

body. The spirit must hunger and thirst after 
righteousness. 

Thought and prayer are the two general forms 
of spiritual exercise. Thought includes all in- 
tellectual activities, and prayer all moral and re- 
ligious exercises. A devotional spirit sees God 
in everything. This is the language of Dr. 
Mark Hopkins: "Through nature it sees God. 
It sees and cultivates the habit of seeing him in 
everything. To such a spirit the earth and the 
heavens are a temple, the only temple worthy 
of God. To it the succession of day and night 
and the march of the seasons are constant 
hymns. To it not the heavens alone, but the 
whole framework and structure of nature, with 
its ongoings, declare the glory of God. This is 
the spirit which it is the duty and happiness of 
man to cultivate. The highest use of nature is 
not the support of man, but to lead him up to 
God." 

In the words of Dr. E. E. Hale : ''It is a spir- 
itual exercise for me — if I make it so — when I 
lie on the cliff and listen to what the waves have 
to say to me. It is a spiritual exercise — if I 
make it so — when I sit on the cliff at night to 
watch the firefly and the distant lighthouse, and 
the more distant planet, and ask myself who 



8o The Divinity Within Us. 

lighted them and whose business they are en- 
gaged in. It is a spiritual exercise when, as 
we sit at the breakfast table, we make a sacra- 
ment out of coffee and bread by asking God to 
share with us in our meal. It is a spiritual ex- 
ercise as I sit at home and read the words of 
a Kempis or Scougal or Channing in the still- 
ness of my Sunday. And every time we listen 
to know what God says to us, or when we open 
to him our hopes and fears — every time we pray 
— is a season of spiritual exercise.'' 

Material things are to be used. Whoever de- 
spises the world of matter is rejecting his daily 
bread. It is possible to make a wrong use of 
the material, as it is to make a wrong use of 
the spiritual; but it is impossible to make too 
extensive a use. The material is not an evil. 
It exists for the nourishment of spirits. It not 
only supplies food, drink, shelter, clothing, and 
medicine to our bodies. It is vocal with song, 
and becomes the instrument of music infinitely 
varied. It becomes a tongue for the poet and 
orator and prophet. It yields itself as palette, 
brush, easel, canvas, and colors for the finest 
conceptions of the painter. It is at once an in- 
spiration to thought and the vehicle of thought. 
It is wholesome food put in the most digestible 



Matter and Spirit, 8i 

form and placed in easy reach for the entire 
man. The best place for spiritual development 
is right amid the pressure of this material world. 
He is not wise who cloisters himself in caves 
and convents. A man needs to be in the world. 
He needs to be active in the business, politics, 
and social life of the world. Let us not be 
afraid of the earth. God made it. Let us not 
be afraid of our fellow-men. They are our 
brothers. Let us not be afraid of business. 
More and better food, clothing, homes, and med- 
icines will only make us better people. Poverty 
is no means of grace. It is not righteousness. 
It is more likely to be a sin. We need more of 
the material. We need a better understanding 
of its spiritual possibilities. We need to use the 
material extensively, not for mere animal grati- 
fication, but for its highest possible spiritual ends. 



IV. 

MINISTRY OF THE MATERIAL. 



"If a man empties his purse into his head, no man 
can take it from him.'* 

I will not make a poem, nor the least part of a poem, 
but has reference to the Soul, 

Because, having looked at the objects of the universe, 
I find there is no one, nor any particle of one, but 
has reference to the Soul. — JValt Whitman. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Ministry of the Material. 

Mere animal wants are few and simple. The 
ox and the horse fare sumptuously if they have 
a brook and a few acres of green pasturage. A 
small square of jungle is as good a world as a 
lion, a tiger, a bear, a giraffe, or an elephant 
ever dreams of. A beast is content if it has its 
companion and feels no hunger and no fear. 
Give the ox his grass, and let the tiger find his 
prey; then let each lie down on the ground in 
some place where he will not be afraid, and all 
animal wants are satisfied. The beast makes no 
provisions for to-morrow. He "has no store- 
houses nor barns. He lives only in the present 
moment. He makes no calculations for the fu- 
ture, and is troubled by no reflections on the 
past. He learns nothing from the past. The 
generations of his kind, going before him, leave 
no records, no libraries, no forest and animal 
lore for his instruction. Whatever his progen- 
itors know dies with them, and they leave only 
a skeleton in the woods. His birthright is a 



S6 The Divinity With in Us. 

few days' nourishment ; tlien he begins his career 
with exactly the same capital that the tirst of 
his kind had in the beginning. A lion in the 
twentieth century is all that a lion was in Daniel's 
day, and nothing more. He has neither lost nor 
gained in lionhood. He retains the same in- 
stincts, and acquires no now knowledge or gifts. 
Association does not improve him. Though he 
mingle for years with his kind, he will develop 
no more tiian if he had lived alone all his days. 
Beasts make no inventions. They are not pro- 
gressive. 

The beast has only an animal nature to pro- 
vide for. This is the lowest nature and the most 
easily supplied and served. Therefore the beast 
has little need of power, and but little is given 
him. He has power to supply his bodily needs. 
Anything beyond that is superfluous, so far as 
he is concerned. The ox, the ass, the horse, the 
camel, and the elephant have nnich superfluous 
power which they put to the service of their 
masters. 

Put an intellectual and a moral nature in an 
animal, and all this is changed. Instead of one 
nature to serve and supply, and that the lowest, 
he has three ; and the intellectual and moral 
natures are infinitelv higher than the animal na- 



Ministry of the Material, 87 

ture, while their needs are vastly larger and 
more complex. 

This is just the difference between a man and 
a beast. Man having, besides the animal nature, 
two other natures infinitely higher, his needs 
are more. He must have, accordingly, more 
power. If he were a mere animal, his claws, 
teeth, and animal strength would be ample for 
all his needs. Being a man, he must have power 
besides his native physical strength. 

Even the savage must devise some sort of a 
wigwam. He can't expose himself like a com- 
mon beast. He must have weapons like the bow 
and arrow and the spear. He can't get his game 
nor preserve his own life, if he pursues and con- 
tends empty-handed. He must make some at- 
tempt at clothing himself, though it be with 
skins and fig leaves. 

Put a soul into an animal, and he must have 
better food, better shelter, better clothing, better 
weapons. He must have books, papers, lectures, 
sermons, pictures, music, light, heat, schools, 
churches, transportation, messages, medicine, 
amusement, ornament, mansions, burial — there 
is no end to the list of his added wants. From 
the savage's wigwam to the modern king's pal- 
ace there is no condition in which men are per- 



88 The Divinity Within Us. 

fectly satisfied. There is some improvement to 
be made. There is something not yet attained. 

Man must have power to get the things he 
needs. He must have a great deal more power 
than there is in his own muscles. He brings into 
his service the surplus power of the ox, the ass, 
the horse, the camel, and the elephant. With 
his growing wants he demands yet more power. 
He launches his craft upon the sea and spreads 
a sail to the breeze. So wind and water are 
brought into service. He exchanges informa- 
tion with his neighbors, and both are profited. 
If he has many neighbors, he will soon get a 
great deal of information. He makes a record 
of his doings and attainments and hands it down 
to his children. He invents tools that save labor, 
and so represent a corresponding gain in power. 
He builds machines that, while they do not eat, 
do the work of many men. He discovers such 
marvelous forces as steam and electricity, and 
harnesses them to his machines. So he gets 
power for his increasing needs. It is interesting 
to note the material power man has already 
brought into his service. 

In 1887 it was estimated that the steam en- 
gines at work in the earth equaled the power of 
one billion men, or three times the working pop- 



Ministry of the Material 89 

ulation of the world. This one item of power 
has largely increased since that time. In 1890 
the human power, horse power, and steam power 
of the United States was said to be one hundred 
thousand millions of foot tons daily. That is, 
the men, horses, and steam engines of this coun- 
try had power enough to lift that many tons one 
foot in a day. This is equal to the man power of 
three hundred and thirty-three million men. If 
our population was sixty-five millions at that 
time, and if this power had been distributed 
equally, each man, woman, and little child of 
this country would have had more than five 
times the native strength of a strong man. 

But this does not include the many other forms 
of power we are using. Everywhere the wind is 
being harnessed to draw our water and to drive 
our boats. All over the country waterfalls and 
rapids are utilized to grind, saw, gin, spin, weave, 
and do a hundred other kinds of manufacture. 
The Electrical Review says that the power of 
Niagara Falls is equivalent to that of four million 
horses. Since one horse power is equal to four- 
teen man powers, the falls of Niagara have the 
power of fifty-six million men. The cash value 
of these falls as a source of power is estimated 
at more than a billion dollars annually. 



90 The Divinity Within Us. 

A woman with a sewing machine can do as 
much work now as a half dozen women could 
do with the needle a half century ago. Once 
men made books by hand from the writing to the 
binding. When the primitive printing press 
came, it meant the adding of a hundred times 
more power to the book industry. Now we have 
the improved printing press, with steam power, 
which can do fifteen hundred times as much 
work in a given time as the old hand press. 
Now a manuscript is clicked rapidly through a 
typewriter, committed to a lightning typesetting 
machine, and dashed off on a Hoe press at the 
rate of three hundred and sixty-four thousand 
copies an hour. Or, as the orator delivers his 
speech, it is taken down in shorthand and sent 
to the press room over the telephone; and when 
the audience is dismissed and the orator is on 
his way to the hotel fifteen minutes later, he 
meets the newsboy and buys a copy of the even- 
ing paper containing a verbatim report of his 
oration. Thus the speaker addresses not only 
the ten thousand assembled before him in the 
auditorium, but ten million others, who read his 
words in their homes. 

In the modern shoe factory one operative does 
the work that formerly required from six to ten 



Ministry of the Material 91 

men. In the manufacture of wall paper one 
man now does the work formerly done by one 
hundred men. With the improved button ma- 
chiner}' one boy can do the work done by two 
hundred and fifty skilled men a few years ago. 

In every industry of the civilized world — agri- 
culture, mining, lumbering, brick-making, build- 
ing, transportation, blacksmithing, surgery, 
printing, binding — machinery is introduced that 
saves labor, saves expense, and does better work. 
In buying the latest improved agricultural ma- 
chinery, the farmer is increasing his power many 
fold. Who can estimate man's added power in 
sawmills, planers, machine shops, packing 
houses, railways, steamers, and a thousand other 
equally useful inventions? The United States 
Patent Office issues more than twenty thousand 
patents annually. This indicates the rapidity 
with which we are acquiring new power. 

\\'ithout tools or machinery man would have 
but little the advantage of beasts. He must have 
been a savage forever if he had been limited to 
his native physical power. He needs many times 
his native power in order that his larger natures 
may be supplied. 

So we find him striving for power. The brute 
has been made to give up his surplus. The 



92 The Divinity Within Us. 

winds that formerly spent their energy in zephyr 
plays or rioting storms are put to drawing water 
and hauling freight. The water that laughed 
and leaped down the falls in wild glee is bound 
to hard toil at the wheel, or is forced to exert 
its subtler and mightier energy at the piston. 
Electrical giants of the air that terrified men by 
their awful shoutings in the heavens and by 
their furious leapings from horizon to horizon 
have been fettered in steel and copper and tamed 
and taught to do all things for man. 

What energy is concreted in our inexhaustible 
coal beds! The annual production of coal in 
the United States is two hundred and forty mil- 
lion net tons. One ton is equal to nine man- 
power years of three hundred and eleven days 
each. So the potentiality of our annual coal 
output, estimated in man-power years, is two 
billion and one hundred and sixty million years. 
The full power of this coal is equal to thirty 
strong human slaves for every man, woman, and 
child in the nation ! Science is endeavoring to 
transmute coal energy into electric energy di- 
rectly by a chemical process, thus preventing the 
waste of any power. Inconceivably abundant 
as it is, we have no power to waste. We be- 
grudge every leakage. 



Ministry of the Material. 93 

Air is to be compressed and liquefied for pow- 
er. It is to be decomposed and burned for 
power. We are even constructing motors to 
be run by light, so that our sunshine may be 
turned into power for the operation of machin- 
ery. The moon's influence, in the rising and 
the falling of the tides, is to be converted into 
electrical energy and harnessed to our machin- 
ery. 

At the magic touch of scientific agriculture 
and irrigation, vast areas of soil that allowed 
beasts to starve have been turned into power in 
the form of abundant harvests. Now ''a thou- 
sand civilized men thrive where a hundred sav- 
ages starved.'' Once ag'riculture was almost the 
only source of human supply. Now the timbers 
of the earth are as precious as gold. Empires 
in our West, that seemed uninhabitable save for 
hoary mountains, now promise to become the 
very heart of the world's wealth and power. 
Their hoary mountains have proved to be pal- 
aces of granite and marble containing royal 
treasuries of gold, silver, and precious stones. 
Railways are penetrating these empires, and the 
people of the earth are going in to possess the 
land. "Another instance equally surprising is 
the Siberia of to-day. Ten years ago the very 



94 The Divinity Within Us. 

mention of that country conjured up wastes of 
snow and ice, boundless steppes and coasts lined 
with icebergs. To-day this same country is filled 
with thriving villages of peasant farmers, pro- 
ducing abundant crops of grain and vegetables, 
and giving promise of mineral wealth that will 
astonish the world. Cities of from ten to fifteen 
thousand inhabitants are numerous, and first- 
class hotels and restaurants, with electric lights 
and telephone attachments." 

Money is a power. Says Dr. Strong: "The 
wealth of the United States is phenomenal. It 
is now (1890) estimated at $61,450,000,000. In 
1880 it was valued at $43,640,000,000 — more 
than enough to buy the Russian and Turkish 
empires, the kingdoms of Sweden and Norway, 
Denmark and Italy, together with Australia, 
South Africa, and all South America — lands, 
mines, cities, palaces, factories, ships, flocks, 
herds, jewels, moneys, thrones, scepters, dia- 
dems and all — the entire possessions of 177,- 
000,000 people." 

In 1900 our national wealth was estimated at 
$90,000,000,000. It more than doubled in twen- 
ty years. L. G. Powers, of the Census Bureau, 
tells us that merely the increase of our national 
wealth during the last decade "exceeds the sav- 



Ministry of the Material. 95 

ings of all the people of the American hem- 
isphere from the time Columbus discovered 
America until the outbreak of the Civil War. He 
maintains that it is even greater than the savings 
of the entire race from Adam's day until inde- 
pendence was declared, in 1776/' Suppose this 
unthinkable sum continues to double every 
twenty years (and there is no reason why it 
should not, if population increases and labor- 
saving and wealth-producing machinery contin- 
ues to multipty), what an accumulation of 
power ! 

''xA.s civilization increases, wealth has more 
meaning and money a larger representative 
power. Civilization multiplies wants, which 
money affords the means of gratifying. With 
the growth of civilization, therefore, money will 
be an ever-increasing power and the object of 
ever-increasing desire." 

Taking into account the many forms of power 
utilized in this country, we find that the people 
of the United States have many times their na- 
tive physical power; as if each man, woman, 
and child were continually served by many able- 
bodied slaves, only the service is more efficient 
and more satisfactory than if rendered by human 
slaves. A few men in this countrv have each 



96 The Divinity Within Us. 

an income of twelve million dollars a year. This 
is equal to the service of forty thousand unskilled 
laborers. A man with such a vast fortune has 
forty thousand times his native physical power. 

Men have no idea of stopping at this. They 
are not satisfied. They need more power. They 
must have other servants and better servants. 
The palatial express steamer of to-day takes too 
much time in crossing the Atlantic. Others are 
to be built that will make the voyage in four 
days. We are out of patience with the railway 
train that creeps across the continent at the rate 
of fifty miles an hour. Railroad men are hard 
at work leveling and straightening roads, im- 
proving and strengthening cars and locomotives, 
that the present speed may be doubled as soon as 
possible. Ships can no longer take the time to 
double around capes. Canals must be cut across 
every isthmus to give the shortest routes possi- 
ble. The air ship is an assured thing. Nations 
will contend for the commerce and traffic of the 
air as they have heretofore for their places on 
the sea. Men are not going to the expense, nor 
take the time, to string telegraph wires and lay 
submarine cables. We shall talk over land and 
sea, at any distance, by a system of wireless 
telegraphy. Indeed, the system is already being 



Ministry of the Material. 97 

put in operation. Fewer men, perhaps none at 
all, will risk their lives in the great international 
wars of the future. Gigantic, costly, manless 
machines, under perfect electrical control and 
operated from a distance without wires, will 
fight our battles and decide our international 
disputes without the loss of a man. ''Wars of 
the future will be won or lost by the national 
treasury.'' The first wars of the human race 
were fought in native human might, as beasts 
contend, and resulted in awful loss to human 
life. It is said that it costs $65,000 to kill a 
man in war now. Our wars are becoming more 
and more expensive to national treasuries, and 
less and less expensive to human life. Still our 
wars are unnecessarily destructive to human 
life. Life is too sacred to be imperiled in bat- 
tle; and war, as carried on in all past ages, is 
too demoralizing. If money is to serve us in 
any way, let it fight our battles and spare the 
lives and morals of our young men. As the 
declaration of war depends more and more upon 
treasury resources rather than upon the volun- 
tary enlistment of men, there will be less war. 

"If electricity is utilized as rapidly during the 
next half century as in the past quarter, we 
should have fifty new arts by 1950. This bar- 
7 



98 The Divinity Within Us. 

baric world of ours needs them all. Since 1875 
electrical inventors have developed about one 
new utility a year, major and minor/' Thomas 
A. Edison believes electricity will do fully as 
much in the next fifty years as it has done in 
the past fifty. He believes it will be very ad- 
vantageously applied to railway trains, farming 
machinery, surgery, optics, and astronomy. The 
wonderful record of the United States Patent 
Office tells an inspiring story. The immortal, 
the infinite spirit, man, is to be served by a troop 
of strong and faithful servants. 

There is power everywhere. It is locked in 
every material thing. Man has scarcely begun 
to appropriate it. As civilization advances and 
human wants multiply, man will get better serv- 
ice out of all his present power, and will bring 
into exercise many times as much as he now 
has. We could not understand, and would not 
receive, a prophet who would lift the veil from 
the coming centuries and show us mankind en- 
joying the greatest possible power: when every 
art and industry has perfect machinery, and there 
are no more patents applied for ; when every coal 
field is being worked, and gas and oil are made 
to yield all their power; when every rapid and 
waterfall is giving its utmost energy to human 



Ministry of the Material. 99 

service; when there are no higher possibiHties 
for electricity; when the winds and the waves 
are brought to their highest utihty ; when the 
very daylight delivers its subtle energy upon 
light motors and bends down to common toil; 
when residences, offices, factories, shops, cars, 
ships, churches, colleges, and state buildings can 
be no further im.proved. Of course this is an 
ideal condition that humanity may never attain; 
for the possibilities of invention and manufacture 
are as infinite as the possible combinations of 
the alphabet — as infinite as man himself ; but we 
shall move in that direction for many centuries 
to come. 

The world can never turn backward again. 
Since we have the telegraph and the printing 
press, and the world is acquainted with itself, 
whatever occurs or is discovered or is invented 
or said or done in any part of the world be- 
comes at once the common property of all peo- 
ples. Never again will be lost anything that is 
worth keeping. Some things may be thrown 
away to make room for better. 

Spirit is of primary importance; matter is 
only secondary. Matter, with all its possibilities 
of power, is meant to enrich, ennoble, enlarge, 
enlighten, and empower spirit. Matter is power 

LOFC. 



lOO The Divinity Within Us. 

in the concrete. It is all to be turned into soul 
power. Winds, waves, light, lightning, oil, gas, 
soil, beasts, birds, fish, flowers, marble, granite, 
sandstone, lead, zinc, copper, iron, silver, gold, 
platinum, rubies, diamonds, coal beds, forests, 
and everything else material must enter the mar- 
velous and glorious structure of the human spir- 
it. It takes as many elements to make a man as 
to make a world. 

It is not denied that man may misuse his 
material environment and become base, sensual, 
coarse, and materialistic ; and some fear and pre- 
dict that this will be the sad end of man's present 
advantage. Herodotus is quoted as saying: ''It 
is a law of nature that faint-hearted men should 
be the fruit of luxurious countries ; for we never 
find that the same soil produces delicacies and 
heroes." ''The splendor of our riches will doubt- 
less dazzle the world ; but history declares in the 
ruins of Babylon and Thebes, of Carthage and 
Rome, that wealth has no conservative power; 
that it tends rather to enervate and corrupt. 
Our wonderful material prosperity, which is the 
marvel of other nations and the boast of our 
own, may hide a decaying core,'' admits Dr. 
Strong. 

Has humanity learned nothing from the fatal 



Ministry of the Material. loi 

mistakes of its past? Has history been made 
and written and read in vain? Do not Amer- 
icans know better how to use weaUh and power 
than did Babylon or Thebes or Rome or Car- 
thage? The glory of these ancient peoples was 
only material. The fine arts, learning, and reli- 
gion were at low ebb. That wealth and power 
was in the hands of heathen. All heathen civi- 
lizations are doomed, wealth or no wealth. The 
wealthy nations of to-day are Christian. Chris- 
tianity has made vast wealth possible and helped 
to accumulate it in Europe and America. The 
Christian mind only has been capable of wealth- 
producing inventions. Even in Christian coun- 
tries the professed Christian has large advantage 
in wealth over the non-Christian. The leading 
business men, professional men, and statesmen 
are generally identified with some Church. God 
seems to have confidence in the Christian busi- 
ness man. He is honoring those that honor him. 
The Christian in this country, though putnum- 
bered two to one, almost wholly controls the 
country — ^holding the vast majority of its wealth, 
projecting the commercial and manufacturing 
enterprises, and directing in the enactment of 
laws. Christian nations control the world, so 
that no nation can exist except by their permis- 



I02 The Divinity Within Us, 

sion. Sixty-four per cent of the world's popula- 
tion is under Christian government. Christian 
peoples, especially Protestantism, hold the com- 
merce of the world. 

''There is a balance of power to be preserved 
in the United States as well as in Europe. Our 
safety demands the preservation of a balance 
between our material power and our moral and 
intellectual power. The means of self-gratifi- 
cation should not outgrow the power of self- 
control.'' It is the honest conviction of some 
that this balance is being preserved. During the 
nineteenth century man was studying his mate- 
rial environment, but he was also studying him- 
self as a spiritual being. Schools flourished. 
The Christian Church never knew another such 
era of growth. Some of the strongest denomi- 
nations of Christendom have been built up al- 
most wholly during the last hundred years, and 
the older branches of the Church have expe- 
rienced a phenomenal growth. During the cen- 
tury the Christian population of the world ad- 
vanced from two hundred millions at its begin- 
ning to five hundred millions at its close. It was 
eminently a century of missionary operation. 
In 1793 Carey and Thomas sailed for India. 
There Vv^as then one missionary society, and its 



Mifiistry of the Material. 103 

annual income was $415. Now there are about 
two hundred and eighty missionary societies, 
and they are expending $19,000,000 annually. 
There are more than nine thousand foreign mis- 
sionaries in the field, preaching the gospel in 
nearly seventeen thousand heathen localities. 

The Christian of to-day is a nobler being than 
the Christian of a hundred years ago. He is 
more intelligent. He is more tolerant. He is 
more fraternal. He has a larger interest, a 
broader sympathy, and a more extended help- 
fulness. While there is still some fanaticism and 
superstition attaching to him, he has shaken off 
whole nights of it in the last few decades. "One 
of the great services w^hich science has rendered 
has been to clear the world of an immense 
amount of rubbish which lay in the path of 
progress. The scientific habit of mind is fatal 
to credulity and superstition ; it rests not on opin- 
ions, but facts; it is loyal, not to authority, but 
truth. This means that as the scientific habit of 
mind obtains men will break away from the 
superstitions of heathenism and from the super- 
stitious forms of Christianity.'' 

Concerning religion in England in the first 
half of the nineteenth century, a recent writer 
savs : "RationaHsm was never before so wide- 



104 The Divinity Within Us. 

spread and influential. In many circles the at- 
mosphere was charged with doubt and indiffer- 
ence. Byron and Shelley had contributed some- 
thing toward this skeptical trend of the time. 
The writings of Bentham^ Mill, Combe, Lewes, 
and other radicals were having their effect, 
weakening long-cherished convictions. Utilita- 
rianism was drying up the springs of sentiment 
and aspiration. . . . Unbelief was fast gain- 
ing ground in this conceited generation. In- 
fidels and iconoclasts abounded. The rational- 
istic temper was to be found not only in the uni- 
versities of Oxford and Cambridge — it was per- 
vading society high and low. The alienation of 
the masses from the Church was a fact, recog- 
nized and deplored. The eighteenth century 
saw a marked defection from the teachings of 
Christianity in the ranks of the upper classes, 
the educated and refined. The second quarter 
of the nineteenth century saw skepticism per- 
meating the lower classes. . . . Ecclesias- 
tics were scoffed at and looked upon as the foes 
and leeches of humanity. . . . The report of 
the Royal Church Communion for 1836 disclosed 
many deficiencies and scandals in the ecclesias- 
tical system — namely, the sale of livings to men 
unfit to be priests, ministers only in name, whose 



Ministry of the Material 105 

ill-paid assistants kept up the ordinary routine 
of services and no more/' 

The same writer, speaking of this same Angli- 
can Church as it was in the closing of the nine- 
teenth century, says : ''Never in the annals of 
England has the Anglican Church had more 
eminent scholars, preachers^ and writers than in 
this period. It is hard to estimate the extent of 
their influence for good. The power of the 
national Church was never greater than it is 
now.'' The same manifest prosperity, the same 
rapid growth, and the same encouraging signs 
are characteristic of Congregationalists, Baptists, 
Presbyterians, Methodists, and others, not only 
in England but in America as well. According 
to all outward indications, the Church was never 
before in such favor with the people, or had 
such firm footing in the country. This is true 
everywhere. Men are putting more money into 
Churches and schools than ever before. The 
United States spends annually for Churches, 
$130,000,000; for public schools, $155,000,000; 
for colleges, $50,000,000. ''A gift of $1,000,000 
to education is now more common than the gift 
of $50,000 fifty years ago. Gifts of $5,000,000 
are soon to become as common as gifts of $50,- 
000 were fifty years ago, and the time may not 



io6 The Divinity Within Us. 

be remote when the gift of $50,000,000 toward 
the estabHshment of institutions of learning or 
of charity may be frequent." There are many 
wealthy men who are wisely, nobly, unselfishly 
investing their millions in schools, libraries, and 
hospitals. There is a growing list of philan- 
thropists like Vanderbilt, Helen Gould, Armour, 
Cupples, Rockefeller, Pearson, Morgan, and 
Carnegie. Rich men are themselves rising up 
to preach the "gospel of wealth." 

During the eight years from 1893- 1900 it is 
estimated that the sum of $314,050,000 was be- 
stowed upon our educational, philanthropic, and 
religious institutions. In the year 1900 these 
institutions received, in sums of $5,000 or more, 
the sum of $47,500,000. In June, 1901, our 
American colleges for men and women received 
the munificent sum of $12,774,582. If in this 
age and in this country men are acquiring larger 
wealth and getting it quicker than in any other 
age or country, they are also giving more large- 
ly, more intelligently, and more unselfishly. 
Men in the United States do not worship "the 
almighty dollar" any more devotedly than people 
of other countries and other ages worshiped 
their coins of gold and silver; but our worship 
is vastly more intelligent. 



Ministry of the Material. 107 

Wealth gotten unscrupulously and expended 
selfishly will do man no good. Such methods of 
getting and spending, and not the money itself, 
will keep men out of the kingdom of heaven. 
Money accumulated through legitimate and 
righteous methods, and used for the ameliora- 
tion of human conditions, is a means of grace. 
Extreme poverty has proved hurtful to men 
bodily, intellectually, and morally. The proofs 
of this are everywhere. Imagine our country 
without capitalists, without strong banks, with- 
out railroads, without great manufacturing es- 
tablishments. Think of the Church itself with 
no large sums invested in publishing houses, 
colleges, universities, orphan homes, and build- 
ings for worship. 

The words of Jesus, ''Lay not up for your- 
selves treasures upon earth, where moth and 
rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break 
through and steal : but lay up for yourselves 
treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor 
rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not 
break through nor steal: for where your treas- 
ure is, there will your heart be also,'' are only 
the divine protest against the selfish use of 
money. Jesus would not have men make money 
the supreme end of their endeavors, the god of 



io8 The Divinity Within Us. 

their devotions ; but he himself says, ''Your heav- 
enly Father knoweth that ye have need of all 
these things ;" and he also promises, on the con- 
dition of our seeking first the kingdom of God 
and his righteousness, that ''all these things shall 
be added unto you." There is not a word in all 
the Scriptures against economy, thrift, and pros- 
perity. God prospers good men and Christian 
nations. He will open the richest treasures of 
heaven and earth to the people he can trust to 
properly use them. He would not have us 
waste our treasures by investing them in places 
of insecurity, "where moth and rust doth cor- 
rupt, and where thieves break through and steal," 
where they really will be lost so far as doing 
anybody any real good. Even material things 
are sacred. God approves our investments in 
the railways, factories, and all useful industries 
of this country. He will continue to bless and 
prosper us if we invest properly in good litera- 
ture, art, music, schools, hospitals, asylums, and 
Churches; if we use our material prosperity for 
the upbuilding of the intellectual and moral na- 
tures; if we turn everything into soul. 

"How is it with man's spiritual concerns? 
The insistence of science, the compulsion of busi- 
ness have, no doubt, swung man too much into 



Ministry of the Material 109 

the material. It is widely charged that we live 
in a materialistic and selfish age; that never be- 
fore was the greed-spirit so pronounced. But 
never before since the world came into being has 
there been so much of the gift-spirit, so much of 
the social conscience. Never before in history 
has there been such an uplift in the minds of 
men, such an outlook of the eyes of men, such 
faithful exploration of absolute law, such shat- 
tering of immoral superstitions, such overthrow 
of tyrannical authorities, such exhaustive analy- 
sis of nature, such mastery of the details of ma- 
terial progress. Yet, with all this, let it be re- 
membered that the long battle for knowledge 
and freedom is not ended, the victory is not yet 
won. No; man is the conscript of an endless 
endeavor. Every summit surmounted only re- 
veals another one beyond.'' Such is the view 
of Edwin Markham. 

This ever-present material is not a dismal dun- 
geon imprisoning the spirit. It is not a circum- 
scribing wall, shutting out light and liberty, and 
beyond which we cannot pass. It is not a dull 
weight upon the soul pressing down to utter 
despair. It is the soul's larger garden of Eden. 
It is full of beauty and good. It has no forbid- 
den tree^ but man may pluck all its flowers and 



no The Divinity Within Us, 

taste all its fruits. Gross as it may seem to some, 
it is an intimation of the spiritual, a foreshadow- 
ing of the best things for which we hope. Coarse 
as it may seem, it is food meet for spirits. The 
proper use of the material not only ministers to 
the physical health, strength, and growth; it 
wonderfully builds up the intellectual and spir- 
itual natures. The material helps the soul on 
toward its highest attainments. 



V. 
MINISTRY OF THE IMMATERIAL, 



To myself I seem to have been only like a boy play- 
ing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and 
then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell 
than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all 
undiscovered before me. — Isaac Newton. 

But when I list to Music cry 

Her ecstasies of grief and joy, 
Diviner visions throng my sky, 

And lordlier domes than those of Troy. 

— George Stirlins^, 



CHAPTER V. 

Ministry of the Immaterial. 

Living as we do in these bodies, with such 
insistent material demands upon the earth, which 
so lavishly supplies these demands, and knowing 
vaguely that hundreds of millions of suns and 
planets revolve about us, we are unduly im- 
pressed with the materiality of the universe. 
However, if we take a second thought and re- 
member that unthinkable distances separate 
these heavenly bodies and make them appear as 
only tiny points of light, we shall be apt to 
conclude that there is not enough matter here 
to justify us in calling this a material universe. 
God has had to set these heavenly bodies aflame, 
and teach man the use of the telescope, in order 
that we might know of their existence. How 
many planets like the earth might be crowded 
into the space given to the solar system! Hjow 
many suns could swing in a line between the 
earth and our sun ! When we attempt to survey 
interstellar space, we find very soon that matter 
is relatively a very small quantity in this uni- 
8 



114 The Divinity Within Us. 

verse. It has been computed that for every 
cubic inch of matter in the solar system there 
is an allotment of at least ten million cubic 
miles of space. "By analogy this is the approxi- 
mate condition of the universe. If the matter 
of the solar system were blotted out by putting 
it in general diffusion, it could not be discovered, 
nor would it produce dimness in any fixed star/' 
If the mysterious forces that collect matter and 
bind it into visible bodies should become inop- 
erative, and all matter become evenly diffused 
through universal space, it would be as rare and 
undiscoverable to all our physical senses as is 
the intangible and unknown ether, the existence 
of which we have to assume. 

Had we power to gather this matter and build 
worlds, we could find only enough to build at a 
few points unthinkably distant from each other. 
But at any point in any of these distances the 
human mind could find food for thought, and 
the human spirit would be still in the midst of 
its most essential environment. ''Whither shall 
I go from thy Spirit? or w4iither shall I flee 
from thy presence?" 

However abundant material things in man's 
environment, the things immaterial but just as 
real are much more abundant. There are some 



Ministry of the Immaterial 115 

facts besides solid worlds. There are some il- 
luminating truths that do not radiate from bril- 
liant stars. There^are burning thoughts that do 
not catch from blazing suns. There are gems 
more beautiful than the diamonds of Kimberly. 
There are veins of gold more precious than ever 
rewarded the search in Ophir, California, or the 
Klondike. There is a music more enrapturing 
and intoxicating than was ever coaxed from 
reeds or swept from vibrant strings. There is 
a beauty never put on canvas, never blushed on 
a cheek, never bloomed in a garden, and never 
mingled in foliage or plumage. There are sup- 
plies for the inner man richer and more varied 
than the material world affords for the physical 
man. There is a world — an inner world or an 
outer world, but another world — where a man 
finds a table set before him meet for the spirit 
he is. Here every delight is too delicate, holy, 
sacred, spiritual to be expressed on canvas or 
harp, in tree or bird. Here the greatest artists 
learn to despise their own best achievements. 
Here poets and apostles have delighted, yet wept 
in desperation of any earth-language that could 
bring their visions to men. That world where 
all is unutterable! That world larger, more 
bounteous, more glorious than this ! That great 



ii6 The Divinity Within Us. 

country of spiritual verities too fine for even 
God to express in material, and which have 
never appeared in wood or stone or silver or 
gold or flesh or light or sound ! That world of 
thought and feeling, of vision and communion, 
where the human spirit mingles with higher spir- 
its and finds the best part of his environment! 
That high world which shall endure when frailer 
material worlds shall have passed away ! In 
such a world lives he who is more man than 
beast. From such a world he draws his larger 
supplies. In such a world he hopes to have 
eternal life. 

Even in the present material world man does 
not live by bread alone. There are many other 
things more necessary to him than this material 
sustenance. He can live without the material, 
but he cannot live without the immaterial. The 
immaterial world is so essential to our life that 
in it we really ''live, and move, and have our be- 
ing.'' It is man's native element. He is adapted 
to it as the fish to the water and as the bird to 
the air. Taken out of this element, he dies in 
all his distinctive nature. 

There is no more necessity for an attempt to 
prove the existence of the immaterial world than 
for an effort to establish the fact of the mate- 



Ministry of the Immaterial. 117 

rial world. That a few have doubted the ex- 
istence of all material things, that others have 
gone to the opposite extreme and denied the 
fact of immaterial things, and that still others 
have gone at once to both extremes and held 
that both the material and the immaterial are 
nonexistent, only instance the folly and insanity 
which occasionally attack the human mind. 

With these few insane exceptions men have 
universally taken the sane and practical view 
that man is both a material and an immaterial 
being in the midst of a suitable material and 
immaterial environment. As the material world 
is apprehended by the physical senses and light 
is softened for the eye and sound is subdued for 
the ear, so the immaterial world is entered by 
the immaterial man, who finds truth suited to 
the intellect, righteousness suited to the moral 
nature, and love suited to the spiritual nature. 

That immaterial world is not a fanciful cre- 
ation of man's active mind. Man is no more a 
creator in the immaterial than in the material 
realm. It would be a smaller task for his puny 
arms to throw the planets into their orbits and 
set the suns in their places than for his mind to 
evolve all that man finds in his immaterial en- 
vironment. 



ii8 The Divinity Within Us. 

Man can think only where some one else has 
thought before him, and truths are the only 
stepping-stones of intellectual progress. As the 
foot must have a solid rest and the outspread 
wing must press a sustaining atmosphere, so 
the mind can continue its tireless flight only in 
a realm of fact, and any attempt to go beyond 
can only result in disaster. 

A man's mental activities help him, not be- 
cause he thus creates intellectual pabulum, but 
because he gathers it. The mind is strengthened 
and educated by exercise, just as the physical 
powers are; but it no more creates the great 
facts it handles than the hands creat^e the stones 
they pick up. Man can think only because the 
Creator is a thinker, and because both the mate- 
rial and immaterial worlds with all their rela- 
tions and laws are facts. He reasons logically 
only because there is an orderly creation. He 
has grown intellectually, morally, and spiritually 
through thousands of years because he has 
found real and appropriate nourishment in an 
immaterial world. He has no more created it 
than he has created bread for the body. 

If there were no immaterial but real environ- 
ment, man would be as common a beast as any 
other animal that feeds altogether on the mate- 



Ministry of the Immaterial. 119 

rial. There could be in him no reason, no con- 
science, no faith, no hope, no love. He would 
be guided by a low instinct only, for the grati- 
fication of a few physical desires, and could not 
know even the higher uses of the material. He 
would build no schools, read no books, erect no 
churches, have no civilization, and cherish no 
immortal hope. 

It is unthinkable that man should have an 
infinite capacity for truth and an insatiable de- 
sire for truth, if there is no truth. It is in vio- 
lation of ^11 analogy that man should have a 
conscience and all that fine moral sense, if there 
is no such thing as righteousness and reward. 
It does violence to what a deluded race has called 
reason that man should be spiritually minded and 
have a consuming passion for God, if there is no 
God to love in return. It is inconsistent that we 
should be asked to trust the sensual testimony 
to our present physical life, if we are to discredit 
the inward witness to an abiding eternal life. 

Man is not surer of his hands and feet than 
of his intellectual and spiritual powers. The 
cultured man is not more conscious of even the 
sensations in his flesh than he is of his own 
mental processes and spiritual experiences. 

Man thinks. This is one mark of his infinite 



120 The Divinity Within Us. 

superiority over the brute. He is industrious 
in gathering facts, he is keen in observing their 
relations, he is logical in the order of their ar- 
rangement, and thus works out the various sci- 
ences. Hypotheses are assumed, the laborious 
processes of reason are gone through, and philo- 
sophical systems of thought are produced. Fine 
souls have visions that are not incarnate, and 
they try to illustrate them to us of dull sight 
in the marvelously chiseled stone and in the 
exquisitely colored canvas. The mind has 
brought into our companionship a multitude of 
choice spirits whose only incarnation is in the 
moving lines of a play or the engaging plot of a 
novel. 

'The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, 
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to 

heaven ; 
And as imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name." 

So there is no end to the making of books, 
the painting of pictures, and the carving of stat- 
uary. Man has been as active intellectually as 
physically, and he enjoys to-day a reward of 
truth and ideals more precious than gold. He 



Ministry of the Immaterial. 121 

has found the world of truth rich and responsive. 
Every common thing is found invested with im- 
material wealth. The fields have yielded more 
fine thought than golden grain. Immortal verse 
has grown where the inscribed marble and gran- 
ite slab crumbles to dust. The poem has hung 
''on the berry bush/'' the angel has lived in un- 
hew^n stone, and wherever men have gone they 
have heard ''a sky-born music still.'' 

"Tis not in the stars alone, 

Nor in the cups of budding flowers. 
Nor in the redbreast's yellow tone, 

Nor in the bow that smiles in showers. 
But in the mud and scum of things — 
There always, always, something sings." 

So vast and valuable are our acquisitions from 
that world that our homes are filled with them, 
and we are investing hundreds of millions in 
public libraries and art galleries. But much has 
not been spoken nor written nor painted nor 
sculptured. The finest is unutterable and defies 
incarnation. 

"The mind yet has its palace halls. 

Hung with rich gifts and pictures rare. 

Where, free from all that man enthralls, 
Brave thoughts like eagles cleave the air. 

Where sunlit visions charm the soul 

And lofty memories have control." 



122 The Divinity Within Us. 

Man is further distinguished. He lays hold 
upon the immaterial world with yet another 
power. He prays. He feels the constraint of 
moral law and the influence of spiritual forces. 
He cannot apprehend God by any of the physical 
senses ; he cannot find him out by any intellectual 
search; but he feels him near and indispensable. 
Men have always tried to get an intellectual ap- 
prehension of God^ and many have tried to em- 
body their conceptions in the carved or molten 
image. No mental conception or physical rep- 
resentation has had anything but a local or tem- 
porary acceptance; but the deep spiritual sense 
that *'God is, and that he is a rewarder of them 
that seek after him/' is universal with the race 
and human history. So, always and everywhere, 
men have cried their deepest needs to an invisi- 
ble throne and offered their worship at an un- 
seen altar. All sorts of gifts have been brought. 
The clean bird has been laid upon the altar. 
The lamb without blemish has bled there. The 
infant, loved like life itself, has been torn from 
the breast and immolated there. The worshiper's 
own flesh, writhing in pain and death, has been 
prostrated there. The strong mind has surren- 
dered there, with the broken heart and the con- 
trite spirit. 



Ministry of the ImmateriaL 123 

These are the efforts of the human spirit to 
get into the bosom of the Divine for safety and 
peace and power and joy and completeness. 
This feeHng after God has been rewarded. Men 
have gotten from the moral and spiritual world 
exactly what they have asked for. God has only 
awaited man's ability and readiness to receive. 
We have had revelation in message, vision, and 
incarnation. We have received salvation from 
all our guilty fears and to all our cherished 
hopes. We have come into an inheritance of 
peace that passeth understanding. The joy that 
has become ours is unspeakable and full of glory. 
We have been panoplied with all power and 
commissioned into the service of the spiritual 
kingdom. We have been made complete in Him. 
All things are ours. We have had our question- 
ings hushed, our doubts removed, and have 
come into full assurance. We have come into 
a life of joy and praise and communion while 
spiritually beholding Him who is otherwise in- 
visible. Priests and prophets, sermons and songs, 
creeds and cathedrals, prayer and praise, are ex- 
pressions of the race's highest life and aspira- 
tions. Our touch of the spiritual world is cer- 
tain and satisfying. 

We are struck with new amazement every day 



134 ^'/^^ Divinity Within Us. 

at the miracles of physical power. It has made 
civilization and life marvelous in modern Europe 
and America. The earth is belted and laced 
with steel. It is netted all over with electric 
wires. Factories are turning out their strange 
products by train loads and ship loads. Com- 
merce and travel, ramifying continents and seas, 
outstrip the wind in their swiftness. Human 
communication takes the wings of the lightning 
and goes on with the speed of thought. 

But the miracles of the physical forces do not 
compare with the miracles of the subtler forces 
of the immaterial world. That mind is mate- 
rialistic and gross indeed that can have no con- 
ception of power except such as is bound in a 
hundred tons of steel to drive a piston or throw 
a projectile. To such minds the great institu- 
tions of the world are railways, manufacturing 
plants, and packing houses. To them the heroes 
of the race are the bulls and bears who have 
made millions by speculation in w^heat and pork ; 
or the military giants who have sunk fleets, 
burned cities, and wrought carnage on battle- 
fields. 

Many have made the mistake of regarding the 
subtler forces as the weaker forces ; but the sub- 
tlest forces are the mightiest. The fifteen deci- 



Ministry of the Immaterial. 125 

sive battles of human history have been named, 
and their influence upon progressive civiHzation 
estimated ; but beyond all estimate is the greater 
and better influence of the fifteen greatest poets, 
or the fifteen greatest novelists, or the fifteen 
greatest painters, or the fifteen greatest sculptors, 
or the fifteen greatest singers, or the fifteen great- 
est prophets, or the fifteen greatest preachers. 
The paintings of Raphael and the sculpture of 
Michael Angelo are more influential achieve- 
ments than the campaigns of Alexander and 
Caesar. The blind Milton was mightier in the 
seventeenth century than the iron Cromwell. A 
volume of Tennyson's sweet poems has done 
more for England than the thundering of Wel- 
lington's guns at Waterloo. James Wolfe rec- 
ognized the ''Elegy in a Country Churchyard'' 
as a more powerful achievement than the cap- 
ture of Quebec from the French. The prayers 
of John Knox were more terrible to royal tyr- 
anny than the tread of armed rebels. The 
Lutheran Reformation and the Wesleyan Re- 
vival wxre demonstrations of intellectual and 
spiritual energy mightier for the uplift of the 
race than all the beneficent wars of history. 

It is easy to calculate the amount of water 
that the Mississippi will pour into the Gulf in 



126 The Divinity Within Us. 

a thousand years ; but who will undertake to 
measure the contribution of Shakespeare to hu- 
man Hfe in the same time ? The power and com- 
mercial value of the Niagara Falls have been 
figured out ; but who will figure for us the pow- 
er and value of only one great American mind 
— statesman, poet, novelist, inventor, orator, or 
preacher ? 

Edwin P. Whipple said: ''From the hour of 
the invention of printing, books and not kings 
were to rule in the world. Weapons forged in 
the mind, keen-edged and brighter than a sun- 
beam, were to supplant the sword and the battle- 
ax. Books ! lighthouses built on the sea of time ! 
Books! by whose sorcery the whole pageantry 
of the world's history moves in solemn proces- 
sion before our eyes. From their pages great 
souls look down in all their grandeur, undimmed 
by the faults and follies of earthly existence, 
consecrated by time." These are conquests of 
mind, gathered treasures of the intellect, that 
make a great world themselves. The stored-up 
power in them means more for the race than all 
the coal beds and oil reservoirs of the earth. 
The French Revolution has been traced back to 
the influence of John Locke's "Essay Concern- 
ing the Human Understanding." Our own dev- 



Ministry of the Immaterial. 127 

astating Civil War was precipitated by ''Uncle 
Tom's Cabin/' We cannot know what wars 
have been avoided because of the influence of 
other books ; but we can rejoice in the present 
efforts of intellectual and moral forces to dis- 
arm the god of war. At this stage of the con- 
flict we are hopeful of the pen's ultimate and 
complete triumph over the sword. 

"For I would yield the passing hour 
To books and their enchanting power. 
They are the harvest of the years ; 
They give us solace, give us tears; 
They reenforce us, mighty, wise. 
Books are the intellect's allies; 
They aid the strong and help the weak: 
Our stammered thought they plainly speak; 
They give our meditations wings 
To soar above deceptive things, 
That, looking downward, we may view 
The world in its proportions true." 

The moral and religious forces that play upon 
a people do more for the making or unmaking 
of individuals and nations than any other influ- 
ences to which they are subject. These mainly 
determine the material and the intellectual prog- 
ress. A man's moral and spiritual nature is so 
predominant in dignity and all importance that 
both the intellectual and the material rise or fall 



128 The Dimnity Within Us. 

with it. The crushing incubus upon many na- 
tions to-day is the low standard of morals and 
a superstitious view of spiritual matters. It ren- 
ders all material progress impossible, and no in- 
tellect can rise with it or amid it. No advantage 
of soil, resources, climate, or geographical posi- 
tion will avail anything. No fretting and striv- 
ing of mind can lift the load. If the highest 
nature is chained to a dumb idol and held in 
fearful superstitions, body and mind are doomed 
to stay with it. 

Even in the oldest heathen countries the re- 
sources of the earth are almost wholly unde- 
veloped and unknown. Agriculture, the primi- 
tive occupation of man, is carried on after the 
rudest fashion. The marvelous wealth of phys- 
ical power has not been applied nor suspected. 
The few industries are without machinery or 
power except the human hand and human 
strength. Hence the earnings of laborers are 
very small, and insufficient for anything but the 
simplest existence even in times of their pros- 
perity. A flood or a drought means the starva- 
tion of millions but for the scant charity of the 
world. I heard Bishop Thoburn say: 'Tn India 
and China and pagan Africa there will be a hun- 
dred million people who will lie down and sleep 



Ministry of the Immaterial 129 

to-night without having eaten more than one 
very frugal meal during the day, and without 
any shelter over them except perhaps the branch- 
es of a hospitable tree. More people than you 
have in the United States will sleep out of doors 
to-night and go to bed more or less hungry. 
There are two hundred millions of people in 
those countries who are so accustomed to going 
to sleep without having eaten all that hunger 
craved that the circumstance excites no surprise 
in their minds. But where do they sleep? I 
have known men by the tens of thousands (I 
have been stumbling over them these forty years) 
who lie down and sleep just where night finds 
them. They lie down just as the dog lies down, 
in the nearest place where they can get room 
enough. You will find them along the pave- 
ments of Calcutta ; you will find them all through 
the streets of Bombay. Then, when you come 
to think of their wives and children, the idea 
of poverty is such that there is no person in this 
room, except the half dozen missionaries around 
me, who ever saw a poor man. You think you 
have seen one, but you never did." 

Hawthorne said that we do not really live ''till 
the heart be touched. That touch creates us — 
then we begin to be." The aroused, living heart, 

9 



130 The Divinity Within Us. 

taking a vigorous hold upon high and holy en- 
vironment, awakes the whole nature below it. 
The mind becomes alert and strong and rich, 
while the body comes into its material inherit- 
ance. To quote again from Bishop Thoburn: 
'The meek are the chosen people, who as a rule 
do not fight for their rights — the people who seem 
to be forever losing. They are the people who 
do not die of starvation, whose children do not 
go naked, people who are cared for; and in the 
long run the secret of the industrial prosperity 
of nations is dependent upon quiet, humble, self- 
abnegating people who are called the meek of 
the earth. There is an element of prosperity 
that they impart to any community." 

Nothing is more certain than that the secrets 
of the intellectual world and the riches of the 
material world are entered by those purest in 
heart and most correct in spiritual apprehension. 
It is significant that nearly all the great discov- 
eries and inventions have been in Christian coun- 
tries, and that the Christian nations are the rich- 
est on earth. The Spirit not only helps men to 
be morally righteous, but he imparts intellectual 
strength. He is the custodian of the truth ; and 
when he, ''the Spirit of truth, is come, he will 
guide you into all truth.'' He is a teacher, and 



Ministry of the Immaterial. 131 

"he shall teach you all things." ' He assists the 
memory, and he will ''bring all things to your 
remembrance." He gives wings to the imagi- 
nation, so that our old men dream dreams and 
our young men see visions. He not only trans- 
forms the heart, but he renews the mind in all 
its faculties. He gives the prophetic penetration 
of the future, so that men see down the vistas 
of centuries and millenniums ''the vision of the 
world, and all the wonder that will be." He has 
been the inspiration of not only the Christian's 
Bible, but of great libraries of our best literature. 
The Spirit was the muse invoked when Milton 
began the greatest epic ever produced: 

And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer 
Before all temples the upright heart and pure, 
Instruct me, for thou knowest; thou from the first 
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread, 
Dovelike, sat'st brooding on the vast abyss, 
And mad'st it pregnant: what in me is dark 
Illumine, what is low raise and support. 
That to the height of this great argument 
I may assert eternal Providence 
And justify the ways of God to men. 

I believe the Spirit leads in all important dis- 
coveries and quickens the minds of men for all 
useful inventions ; for wherever the Christian 



132 The Divinity Within Us. 

Church goes with its Bible the minds of men are 
specially strengthened. So numerous and mar- 
velous have been the inventions and discoveries 
in Christian countries that Christian peoples 
have become the leaders in all manufacture; the 
commerce of the world is in their hands; they 
hold the large majority of the world's wealth; 
and God is making them to inherit the earth. 
Christian governments now have dominion over 
two-thirds of the human race, and hold the re- 
maining third at their mercy to do with them 
whatsoever they will. When recently a few hun- 
dred soldiers of Christian countries marched to 
the relief of the legations in Peking, and were 
victorious against the mob spirit of four hundred 
million people, one was made to chase a thousand 
and two to put ten thousand to flight. Kipling 
was right in calling his people to the prayer : 

"God of our fathers, known of old, 
Lord of our far-flung battle line, 

Beneath whose awful hand we hold 
Dominion over palm and pine — 

Lord God of hosts, be with us yet, 

Lest we forget, lest we forget!" 

As the heart leads the mind and body in a 
people's rise to supremacy, so it goes before in 
the degeneracy and fall of empires. The release 



Ministry of the Immaterial. 133 

of a spiritual grip, the letting go high moral 
standards, the revel in intellectual luxury, and 
the lust for the material are the first four steps 
in the decline of nations. Read history. 

Mr. Herbert Spencer says : ''It is a corollary 
from the primordial truth which, as we have 
seen, underlies all other truths that whatever 
amount of power an organism expends in any 
shape is the correlate and equivalent of a power 
that was taken into it from without." What 
marvelous power man has expended! It has 
not come from material food. The beasts have 
eaten more of such than man has, and are yet un- 
der the foot of man. Man has not created this 
power. He cannot create matter, which is in- 
ferior to power. He has only gathered this 
power for mind and soul, as he has gathered 
bread for his body. 

In the words of Henry Drummond : ''Half an 
environment will give but half a life. Half an 
environment? He whose correspondences are 
with this world alone has only a thousandth part, 
a fraction, the mere rim and shade of an en- 
vironment, and only the fraction of a life. How 
long will it take science to believe its own creed, 
that the material universe we see around us is 
only a fragment of the universe we do not see?" 



134 T'he Divinity Within Us. 

We live more in that unseen, that intangible, 
that immaterial world than in this material. 
Ella Wheeler Wilcox implores us : 

Let there be many windows in your soul, 

That all the glory of the universe 

May beautify it. Not the narrow pane 

Of one poor creed can catch the radiant rays 

That shine from countless courses. Tear away 

The blinds of superstition; let the light 

Pour through the windows broad as truth itself 

And high as God. . . . Tune your ear 

To all the wordless music of the stars 

And to the voice of nature, and your heart 

Shall turn to truth and goodness, as the plant. 

Turns to the sun. A thousand unseen hands 

Reach down to help you from their peace-crowned 

heights. 
And all the forces of the firmament 
Shall fortify your strength. Be not afraid 
To thrust aside half truths and grasp the whole. 



VI. 

THE BLESSEDNESS OF HUNGER, 



Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after right- 
eousness : for they shall be filled. — Jesus Christ. 

Drink in sometimes the starry skies. — Joseph W. 
Miller. 



CHAPTER VI. 
The Blessedness of Hunger. 

In this varied, rich, and infinite environment 
the Divine Father has done more for his chil- 
dren than we are able to ask or think. We do 
not comprehend the value of this environment, 
and but few properly rejoice amid it. If every 
child of the race would rejoice in his Father, 
and triumph in his Father's handiwork as the 
Psalmist! 'Tor thou, Jehovah, hast made me 
glad through thy work; I will triumph in the 
works of thy hands. How great are thy works, 
O Jehovah ! Thy thoughts are very deep. A 
brutish man knoweth not; neither doth a fool 
understand this.'' What a multitude of the 
brutish and the foolish! 

If we knew and used properly this material 
and immaterial environment, we would leap, 
seize our harps, and join the shepherd lad in his 
optimistic song before the gloomy and pessimis- 
tic king: 

"O, our manhood's prime vigor! No spirit feels waste, 
Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew un- 
braced. 



138 The Divinity Within Us. 

O the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up 
to rock, 

The strong rending of boughs from the fir tree, the 
cool silver shock 

Of the plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt of the 
bear, 

And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his 
lair. 

And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold- 
dust divine, 

And the locust flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full 
draught of wine, 

And the sleep in the dried river channel where bul- 
rushes tell 

That the water was wont to go warbHng so softly and 
well. 

How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to 
employ 

All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in 
joy!" 

In his remarkable book, 'The Making of a 
Man,'' J. W. Lee says truly: ''No definition of 
man is large enough to accommodate the facts 
of his nature that does not embrace what he is 
w^ithout as well as what he is within, what he is 
objectively as well as what he is subjectively. 
It must not only embrace the intellect, but the 
truth which it thinks; not only the will, but the 
right which corresponds to it; not only the eye, 
but the light which gives it meaning; not only 



The Blessedness of Hunger. 139 

the ear, but the sound which matches it ; not only 
the lungs, but the atmosphere to which they are 
correlated. Human nature is dually constituted, 
so that the larger half of itself is outside itself." 
There is no doubt about the fact, dignity, and 
worth of this ''larger half' which is outside of 
self — our environment. I am scattered as dust 
to the four winds. I am in solution in rivers, 
lakes, and seas. I am etherealized in air, light, 
and vapors. I am concreted in stone, iron, coal, 
silver, and gold. I am spiritualized in truth, 
beauty, and love. This inner self is but the 
nucleus of what I am designed to be. 

"We are but sketches of what one day, 
After the hard lines pass away, 
God, the Designer, would have us to be; 
Only in charcoal, rude and rough, 
The mere cartoons of his greater skill." 

Man is a living being, and is to attain his 
stature by growth. No builder without can 
carry him up like a temple of stone by adding 
atom upon atom, line upon line, and precept upon 
precept. The mysterious principle of life within 
must lay hold upon appropriate food, assimilate 
it, and change it into flesh and mind and soul. 
This nucleus must correspond actively with the 
material and the immaterial worlds. Through 



140 The Divinity Within Us. 

many years there must be lively commerce be- 
tween myself and my outward conditions. I 
must gather myself together from the realms of 
the material, the intellectual, and the spiritual. 
My scattered and outer self must come home. I 
must change environment into man. It is in this 
sense that ''each man makes his own stature, 
builds himself.'' 

In spite of a most gracious environment, many 
of the sons of God are failing to realize any 
worthy attainment in being. The millions of 
human failures in the world can lay no blame 
upon environment. The fault is within. They 
have not hungered, they have not chosen, they 
have not striven, they have not persevered, or 
they have sinned against themselves in some 
other blighting manner. No environment, how- 
ever good, can be worth anything to an indif- 
ferent nature. Mr. Ruskin's words concerning 
the higher ministries to mind and soul are just 
as true as if he had been speaking of the lower 
physical hunger and the bread that satisfies : 
''Revelation to what? To a nature incapable of 
receiving truth? That cannot be; for only to 
a nature capable of truth, desirous of it, dis- 
tinguishing it, feeding upon it, revelation is pos- 
sible. To a being undesirous of it, and hating it. 



The Blessedness of Hunger, 141 

revelation is impossible. There can be none to 
a brute or fiend. In so far, therefore, as you 
love truth, and live therein — in so far revelation 
can exist for you, and in so far your mind is 
the image of Gk)d's.'' 

To get the good of his environment, a man 
must have a hearty nature. That inward some- 
thing which we may properly call by the low- 
sounding name, ''a good appetite,'' is absolutely 
essential to life and growth, whether we speak 
of the body, the mind, or the soul. An Irishman 
out hunting a breakfast for his appetite is both 
a healthier and a happier man than his friend, 
Mike, who is out seeking an appetite for his 
breakfast. The hearty thinker, the hearty be- 
liever, the hearty hoper, the hearty lover, and the 
hearty worker — the man with a whole hearty 
nature — is the man who gets the good of his 
surroundings. 

Hunger is no feeble, indififerent, passively re- 
ceptive feeling. There are those who never ex- 
perience much more than a sickly willingness to 
receive. The richest table but feebly tempts 
them. With plenty in reach, and that which is 
good, they have no appetite for anything. They 
turn with nausea from a universe of good to 
the miserable nursing of some disease. The 



i^j3 The Divinity Within Us, 

best in all worlds is nothing to them. They 
waste that which is thrust upon them, and make 
no effort for more. They see their fellows grow 
rich and wise and strong and good, yet are not 
provoked to any endeavor. 

Millions never see, never know, never have, 
never act, never accomplish, because they never 
care. They have no desire. Because they are 
lacking in appetite^ they are wanting in every- 
thing else. God has not shut them out from a 
rich environment. They have the same access 
that others have. But they have not hungered. 
Not feeling a ravenous, gnawing, compelling 
hunger, they have not made the almighty effort 
necessary to the greatest and most astonishing 
success. Effort is in proportion to hunger. The 
powers do not strive blindly or for naught. They 
run according to the intensity of the desire that 
puts them in motion. They toil with respect to 
the urgency of the matter. If the soul is not 
compelled to have, the powers are not forced to 
get. So the hunger that arouses all a man's 
energies, the hunger that puts the world in mo- 
tion, is keen, painful, urgent, deep-seated, and 
unrelenting. 

A man must hunger before he will seek food. 
An infinite environment will be unused until this 



The Blessedness of Hunger. 143 

inward pain drives man to seek satisfaction. A 
man must feel his needs before he can see his 
possibilities. The heavens above him are brass 
only when the heart within him is stone. 

Such a hunger is back of all human activities. 
The great bread and clothing industries of the 
world are expressions of this hunger. Manu- 
facturing establishments spring up from this 
hunger. Navigation results from this, and ev- 
ery vessel sails out of a hungry human heart. 
Long, intricate railway systems are the feelers 
sent out by the unsatisfied hunger of man. Com- 
merce, in all its world-covering ramifications, is 
hungry mankind out hunting for something to 
eat — reaching for environment. 

All human progress is due to an unsatisfied 
hunger in the heart of man. He invents tools 
because with his hands he cannot do what he 
wishes to do. He builds machinery because sim- 
ple hand tools do not meet his felt need. He 
further improves machinery because this felt 
need is still unmet. Architecture improves be- 
cause man has never gotten all he wants in the 
way of a house. Transportation improves be- 
cause the old ways of getting about are not 
equal to the present demands. New music and 
new instruments are always appearing because 



144 The Divinity Within Us. 

man is not satisfied with hearing. Men look 
upon landscapes, frequent museums, follow ex- 
positions, and visit art galleries because they are 
hungry to see. There is progress in all the 
beautiful arts because all the seeing the eyes 
have done has not quieted the clamoring soul. 
Men read because they are hungry for truth. 
There is no limit to the multiplication of literary 
periodicals and no end to the making of books 
because men are not satisfied that they have re- 
ceived the fullness and the ultimate of truth. 
Men feel after God because they hunger and 
thirst after him. 

Because men are hungry, there is a lively ex- 
change of commodities ; wheels turn and spindles 
whir at the utmost capacity of steam; type- 
writers click and printing presses shower down 
the printed pages; the telephone rings and the 
telegraph ticks its message around the world; 
the lumberman saws his board and the architect 
designs his house; the sower goes forth to sow 
and the reaper comes rejoicing, bringing his 
sheaves with him ; the sculptor chisels his marble 
and the painter plies his brush; Mendelssohn 
composes his music and Steinway builds his in- 
strument; Cicero makes his oration and Csesar 
takes the sword. 



The Blessedness of Hunger. 145 

Take away hunger, and you paralyze the man 
and stop the multitudinous activities of the 
world. The hands would not reach out to grasp ; 
the eyes would not look out to see; the ears 
would not attend to hear ; men would not dis- 
cover nor invent nor accumulate; no more fires 
would be kindled in steam boilers, no more sails 
would be spread to the breezes, and no more 
wheels would turn toward a higher and better 
civilization. 

What can successfully oppose a hungry man? 
If a man is hungry, he is going to have some- 
thing to eat. There is no such word as can't or 
impossible in his vocabulary. If manufacturers 
feel a need for better machinery, they will have 
it. If a railroad company feels that it must have 
a steel bridge across the Niagara or the Missis- 
sippi, it will get the bridge. If the world's ap- 
petite calls for an air ship, it will be forthcoming. 
Whatever man hungers for he goes out to find 
and seize. He will have it or die on its trail. 
Humanity never gives up a trail. Thousands 
may fall in the race, but other thousands will 
celebrate the final capture. Oceans unknown 
and mysterious, mountain ranges rugged and 
miles high, continents of ice seemingly impassa- 
10 



146 The Divinity Within Us. 

ble, are all resolutely crossed when the object 
of desire lies beyond them. 

We must distinguish between hunger and cov- 
etousness. Hunger is the sense of an inward 
need. Covetousness is the clamoring of an 
inordinate greed. Hunger indicates health, 
growth, and power. Covetousness indicates 
some inward wrong. Hunger is called ''blessed.'' 
Covetousness is something we are warned to 
''beware of.'' Hunger is the demand of that 
inward principle of life. Covetousness is the 
rapacious demand of an abnormal spirit. A 
hungry man desires to eat, inwardly digest, 
assimilate, and transmute into living tissue. The 
covetous man is wild to accumulate and pile 
around him, but is guilty of a reckless disregard 
of his real inward need. Hunger would pro- 
mote being, even at the sacrifice of outward 
things. Covetousness would sacrifice being for 
the mere gathering of outward things. The hun- 
gry man toils that in the sweat of his face he 
may eat bread and maintain a joyous and pro- 
gressive life. The covetous man toils and 
schemes and worries and frets that the court 
records may show lands deeded to his name and 
that bank books may show credits to his name. 
The hungry man looks upon the material and 



The Blessedness of Hunger, 147 

the immaterial worlds as vast fields where abun- 
dant grow the life and power foods for his whole 
being. He eats that he may live. He reads that 
he may live. He prays that he may live. He 
takes a vigorous and hearty hold upon his whole 
gracious environment that he may have life, 
''and have it more abundantly.'' The covetous 
man looks upon it all as something that can be 
hoarded in banks to draw interest. He lives to 
accumulate. He would gain the whole world, 
even at the infinite cost of his soul. He does not 
regard his own life. Nothing that he rakes to 
his feet is meant to minister to his being. He 
often accumulates libraries and the costliest pro- 
ductions of art, not for any ministry save the 
satisfaction of a vain and covetous desire. He 
has no appreciation of their meaning and value. 
I think I have known such low-browxd beings 
to get what they called religion and hoard it as 
they did everything else, without ever a purpose 
of being more manly or more godly. 

Of course it is the supremie folly for a man to 
devote his energies to the accumulation of things, 
rather than to the growth of being. How brief 
and insecure the hold of the covetous man upon 
his prized collections ! Both he and they are 
winged for separation. Nothing profits a man 



148 The Divinity Within Us, 

except that which becomes a part of him. It is 
not surely and securely his until thus trans- 
muted. If he puts it in banks, thieves may 
break through and steal it. If he invests it in 
houses or goods, the fire or storm may sweep 
it away. If he puts it in lands, he shall be called 
from it. But if he transmutes it into character, 
if he turns it into being, it is his against any 
thief or disaster. 

It is the food property that gives value to 
everything. If it is not ''good for food'^ nor 
''to be desired to make one wise/' that thing 
ought to be no temptation to a man. If nothing 
is to be turned into man, our gold might as well 
be lead, our diamonds but common stones, our 
poems only market reports, our paintings mere 
daubs, our statuary just crude marble, our music 
nothing but beastly cries, our Bible a collection 
of myths, our religion all hypocrisy, and our 
God a block of wood. Blessed is the man whose 
supreme concern is to measure up and who feels 
that all things are his to this end! 

We may approach the standard set for human 
attainment only by the proper and hearty use of 
environment. If men had good appetites and 
ate more, they would grow taller. Suppose we 
should take a notion to convert our national 



The Blessedness of Hunger. 149 

wealth into manhood ! Suppose the physical 
power in use in the United States should always 
contribute to the making of men, and never to 
their unmaking! Suppose the intellectual, 
aesthetic, and moral forces of the world should 
minister wholly to the growth of men! Sup- 
pose all the raw material of the universe were 
used as God designed! 

Every man is heir of all that goes before him. 
The first man's inheritance was common dust. 
God is yet making men of dust. That best man 
must be made of dust ; but it will be the dust of 
poets, painters, sculptors, musicians, orators, 
statesmen, philosophers, kings, prophets, apos- 
tles, martyrs, and heroes. We see through the 
eyes of those who have investigated before us. 
We think with the minds of those who thought 
before w^e did. 

If nineteen hundred years ago there was mate- 
rial enough to make a Paul, there is now material 
enough to make a greater than Paul. If the 
early centuries of the Christian era could pro- 
duce such m.en as Clement, Origen, Tertullian, 
Benedict, Chrysostom, Jerome, Gregory, and Ig- 
natius, this age should produce yet mightier 
men. The fourteenth century gave the world 
Wycliffe and Thomas a Kempis; the fifteenth 



150 The Divinity Within Us. 

gave Columbus, Luther, Michael Angelo, and 
Raphael ; the sixteenth gave Cromwell, Kepler, 
Galileo, Shakespeare, John Knox, and Xavier; 
the seventeenth gave John Milton and Sir Isaac 
Newton ; the eighteenth gave Napoleon, Welling- 
ton, Washington, Wesley, Webster, Clay, Cal- 
houn, and William Pitt; the nineteenth gave 
Lincoln, Lee, Edison, Bismarck, Gladstone, 
Spurgeon, Moody, and Tennyson. The twenti- 
eth century gives material and opportunity for 
greater men than have yet walked the earth. 

If Rome could produce Caesar, Cicero, and 
Virgil, Europe and America should produce 
men greater than these. If Athens in one cen- 
tury, twenty-five hundred years ago, could pro- 
duce Cratinus, Aristophanes, Xenophon, Hip- 
pocrates, Isocrates, Lysias, Phydias, Euripides, 
Myron, Thucydides, Socrates, Eupolis, Anax- 
agoras, Sophocles, Antiphon, Protagoras, Zeno, 
Aristides, Themistocles, Miltiades, ^schylus, 
and Pericles — twenty-two illustrious sons — what 
a galaxy of far superior men the world ought 
to set in history during the twentieth century! 
What man has done and become amid such un- 
favorable conditions is an inspiring prophecy of 
what he may do and be as his surroundings be- 
come more and more favorable. 



The Blessedness of Hunger, 151 

While all men inherit the past, all do not profit 
equally by it. Some are too stupid to read the 
wills of their fathers ; some sell their birthrights 
for messes of pottage; and some are prodigal 
with the portion of goods that falls to them. 
The need of man is to know and enter into his 
inheritance for the purpose of being. 

The first law under which fallen man was 
placed was : 'Tn toil shalt thou eat.'' A universal 
proverb is : 'There is no excellence without great 
labor.'' This law is not the pronunciation of a 
curse, but the announcement of a necessary con- 
dition of growth. Man is a growth, and not a 
manufactured product. If environment took 
hold of man, he would be a manufactured article. 
If. man takes hold of his environment, he is a 
growth. Whatever grows must feed, whether 
plant, animal, mind, or soul. Whatever feeds 
must appropriate his food by toil. If there were 
no appropriating toil on the part of man and 
external forces built him, he would be nothing 
more than a stack of bread. An unskilled hand 
may carve a fair image, but even God alone can- 
not build a man having all the splendid equip- 
ments of mind and soul. He can only give him 
initial being, endowment, and an environment. 
Then man must work out his own salvation. He 



1.52 The Divinity Within Us. 

must strive to enter in. If he comes at last to 
any worthy triumph, it will be through great 
''tribulation/' Those who enter finally into a 
glorious immortality are the heroic who have 
''overcome/' 

Thomas Carlyle believed that this condition 
of labor is an inspiration to men : "It is not to 
taste sweet things, but to do noble and true 
things, and vindicate himself under God's heaven 
as a God-made man, that the poorest son of 
Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of doing 
that, the dullest day drudge kindles into a hero. 
They wrong man greatly who say he is to be 
seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyr- 
dom, death are the allurements that act on the 
heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of 
him, you have a flame that burns up all lower 
considerations. Not happiness, but something 
higher." 

This may be true of many worthy souls, but 
I think there are multitudes who labor only be- 
cause necessity drives them to it. Browning says : 

The soul that's stung to strength through weakness 
Strives for good through evil. 

Describing one of his characters in "Les Mi- 
serables," Victor Hugo remarks: "Guellemer 



The Blessedness of Hunger . 153 

built in this mold might have subdued monsters, 
but he had found it shorter to be one/' Why 
are multitudes of others taking the ^'shorter" 
course, if not to avoid labor? 

The scientist states, as a law universal, that 
the degree of life depends upon the degree of 
correspondence with environment. Correspond- 
ence means activity. Whatever is inactive is 
dead, or soon will be. The feeblest living or- 
ganism is reaching and striving to touch its en- 
vironment. The most delicate plant is stretching 
out a hundred hands to soil and atmosphere and 
light. The supreme purpose of every animal 
creature is to keep up life and growth in itself 
and its kind. How sad that man should be 
called a sluggard and sent to the ant for lessons 
in thrift and self-preservation! 

How can man expect to live, if he does not 
make that his supreme business? No creature 
below him has any such expectation. Man's 
true life is not animal, but intellectual and spir- 
itual. If the oyster cannot live nor grow with- 
out industriously seizing upon the food materials 
in its narrow bed, how can man expect to live 
and grow in his high nature without buying the 
truth at any cost and laying hold upon eternal 
life even at infinite pains? 



154 The Divinity Within Us. 

Man is not to surrender to environment, but 
to seize it. He is not at its mercy, but it is at 
his service. It is not to make him, but he is to 
use it. If any man is a "creature of environ- 
ment,'' it is because he has not had energy to 
choose his model and iise what is put at his 
command. Everything else has a determining 
principle within it that makes it true to its 
nature, whatever its environment. Plant an ap- 
ple tree in whatever climate you will, in what- 
ever soil, and amid whatever growth, and it will 
be an apple tree still or die. Pasture the sheep 
wherever you will and expose him to whatever 
winds that blow, and he will yet be a sheep or 
cease to be. Everywhere in the lower realms 
there is conformity to type. Throughout the 
vegetable and animal worlds there is such heroic 
loyalty to ideals that any little thing will die 
rather than depart from its own. 

Man has the power of choice. His will is im- 
perial. There is no force without that can turn 
him from the type of his divine nature if he 
chooses to be true. He should choose to die 
rather than choose to be less than a divine man. 
Let him say as Sam Jones used to say : 'T don't 
have to live, but I have to do right." 

Every plant sends its feeders out through the 



The Blessedness of Hunger. 155 

rich soil, selecting and rejecting. It resolutely 
passes by ten thousand objectionable particles 
to get appropriate food ; but lives and grows and 
fruits in joy. The bird takes to his wings in 
the morning and through the livelong day selects 
and rejects. He passes by a great deal more than 
he picks up ; but he thrives and sings as he goes. 
It remains for man to give up and murmur be- 
cause of the evil that is in the world, instead of 
going rejoicingly on choosing the good and re- 
jecting the evil. Man, supremely endowed with 
volition and all the princely powers of body, 
mind, and soul, is the only creature capable of 
being a baby ! The hopeless and the pessimistic 
are sick with some internal disorder. ''The fault, 
dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in our- 
selves.'' 

The optimist is just a healthy, hearty man. 
He has a keen relish for the good, which he finds 
abundant enough. He believes it was put here 
for him, and he is grateful for it. He is a man 
of too much good sense, too much good breed- 
ing, and too much appreciation to murmur 
against the Host and find fault with the feast 
when he sits at meat in God's house. To him 
this would still be a good world and life worth 
living if half its good were taken away. 



156 The Divinity Within Us. 

Herbert Spencer gives scientific expression to 
the condition upon which a man may have eter- 
nal life: ''Perfect correspondence would be per- 
fect life. Were there no changes in the environ- 
ment but such as the organism had adapted 
changes to meet, and were it never to fail in the 
efficiency with which it met them, there would 
be eternal existence and eternal knowledge.'' 
Mr. Drummond quoted this and based a most 
excellent argument for immortality upon it. 

Man's essential and distinguishing nature is 
divine and capable of eternal life. The imma- 
terial and greater part of his environment is 
eternal. Truth is immortal : ''the eternal years 
of God are hers." The heavens and the earth 
shall pass away, but God's word shall not pass 
away. The vast realm of the seen is "temporal ;" 
but the vaster realm of the unseen is "eternal." 
As long as man can correspond with this in- 
finite and eternal environment he may live. 
There is no need for any break in this corre- 
spondence, though his physical nature fail or 
the material world pass away. Consciousness, 
the power of thought, and the power of prayer 
remain; the world in which they live remains. 
Why should man die? 

There is no more evidence that man is im- 



The Blessedness of Hunger. 157 

mortal apart from a sustaining environment than 
that a tree will live forever plucked up from the 
nourishing soil. If the branch cut off from the 
tree will wither and the bundle of tares gath- 
ered out of the wheat field will parch, why will 
not man die if out of touch with that which sus- 
tains life ? Jesus said : ''This is life eternal, that 
they might know thee the only true God, and 
Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." To know 
God is to be in touch with him. To know Jesus 
Christ is to take him as the bread of life. 

Is there for the intelligently wicked some sort 
of miserable existence forever, that cannot be 
called life and that is worse than death, sus- 
tained in some manner for punitive purposes? 
is an inquiry into which we shall not carry this 
chapter. But life, in its growing and joyous 
significance, there cannot be except to him who 
has taken hold upon an immaterial world, and 
has learned to think and believe and pray and 
love and sing. 

Jesus was in the world to ''show us the Fa- 
ther.'' He said that man was to live by every 
word that proceeded out of the mouth of the 
Father. He cautioned men about perishable 
things, and urged them to lay up treasures in 
heaven. He said : "Work not for the food which 



15^ The Divinity Within Us. 

perisheth, but for the food which abideth unto 
eternal life, which the Son of Man shall give 
unto you." ''He that eateth this bread shall live 
forever." ''Blessed are they that hunger and 
thirst after righteousness: for they shall be 
filled." The hunger for the soul's highest en- 
vironment should be like the consuming passion 
of the Psalmist for his God : "As the hart panteth 
after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after 
thee, O God." 

"Jehovah is my portion" has been the most 
satisfying and life-giving realization of the high- 
est and holiest souls. Paul did not believe there 
was any external power that could break this 
communion: "For I am persuaded that neither 
death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor 
things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 
nor height, nor 'depth, nor any other creature, 
shall be able to separate us from the love of 
God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." If a 
man will take hold upon his immaterial and eter- 
nal environment, if he will become living and 
strong intellectually and spiritually, if he will 
learn to live the "life hid with Christ in God," 
he may live while God lives. 

The saddest sight in the world is a little, hard, 
puny, bad soul that will not feed and grow and 



The Blessedness of Hunger, 159 

rejoice amid such a gracious environment. To 
fail to be a man is to fail in spite of an infinite 
outlay on God's part. Fed, clothed, taught; 
homed in a God-built world ; sung to by a million 
stars; appealed to by the voice of wisdom; oft 
aroused by the goads of conscience; tugged at 
by strong, unseen hands; invited by a glorious 
and eternal destiny ; warned of the wages of neg- 
lect and sin ; with all shackles struck from him — 
will man come at last to his grave and to his 
judgment a poor, mean, wretched, lost soul? 
When he stands before God at last, will he be 
as lean and as naked as if he had trud^^ed all 

CD 

his years through a barren, parched, desolate 
waste ? 

It is the unsatisfied, the hungry, the aspiring, 
the ambitious, the striving, the courageous, the 
heroic, the conquering, that shall attain high and 
enduring life. To get rid of all low ideals ; to 
quit all mere timeserving ; to keep under the 
flesh and cultivate the spirit ; to forego the grati- 
fication of the present moment whenever it v/ill 
make for the enrichment of eternal life; to use 
the utmost diligence to change environment into 
abundant and eternal life; to vindicate myself as 
a son of God and heir of immortality — ^these are 



i6o The Divinity Within Us. 

the pledges a man should make, and die rather 
than unmake. 

"Vm tired of sailing my little boat 
Far inside of the harbor bar; 
I want to be out where the big ships float — 
Out on the deep where the Great Ones are! 

I can't be ever content to abide 

Where only ripples come and go ; 
I must mount the crests of the waves outside, 

And breathless plunge to the trough below. 

And should my frail craft prove too sHght 
For storms that sweep those wide seas o'er. 

Better go down in the stirring fight 
Than drowse to death by the sheltered shore !" 



VII. 

THE DAYS OF OUR PILGRIMAGE. 



II 



Though our outward man is decaying, yet our in- 
ward man is renewed day by day. — St. Paul. 

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 
Leave the low-vaulted past; 
As the swift seasons roll ! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast. 
Till thou at length art free, 

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea. 

— Oliver Wendell Holmes. 



CHAPTER Vn. 
The Days of Our Pilgrimage. 

I. The Young Man. — Joseph Alfred Conwell, 
in his inspiring book, ''Manhood's Morning/' 
argues convincingly that the years between 
fourteen and twenty-eight make up the period 
of the young man. Until the age of fourteen, 
he is a child; after twenty-eight he matures and 
passes into the decline of life — at least of phys- 
ical Hfe. 

This central period is the zenith of life. Mr. 
Conwell says these are the ''best years of life.'' 
The young man becomes the pillar of strength, 
the shaft of beauty, upon which lean both child- 
hood and old age. Every age since Adam has 
been the young man's age. In all ages he has 
done the bulk of the world's work, because he 
is strong. He has walked in the mellow furrows 
of the field ; he has watched the flocks by night ; 
he has been the hero of the trenches upon every 
battlefield; he has managed the guns in every 
naval engagement; he has been called to totter- 
ing thrones, and his strength has saved them. 
There is something about the young man that 



164 The Divinity Within Us~ 

wins. Merchants want him for salesman. We 
all want him for our physician. When he hangs 
his shingle from the window of a law office, he 
takes practice from the older members of the 
bar and manages it better. If he preaches the 
gospel, throngs rejoice in his ministry and fol- 
low his leadership. 

This is not because he is wiser and better 
than older men. He has personal charms that 
commend him to everybody. Everybody loves 
a youug man. There are an untiring zeal and a 
consuming enthusiasm about him, natural to his 
time and life^ that are contagious and indispen- 
sable to achievement. He has not yet frequently 
met defeat, and so does not count on anything 
but success. He has never been wounded in 
conflict, so throws himself without reserve into 
the struggle without a thought of personal safe- 
ty. He does not count the cost of success, but 
pours out the whole bag of his treasure — ^body, 
mind, and soul — for the prize he seeks. He 
does not stop to weigh, measure, or calculate the 
probabilities of success or failure. He plunges 
in, sometimes with the odds fearfully against 
him; but he has not seen them, and loses no 
time in fighting them. His very blindness is 
sometimes in his favor. He succeeds so amaz- 



The Days of Our Pilgrimage, 165 

ingly because he is at work in the productive 
period of life. The personal charms, the bound- 
less enthusiasm, the limitless faith, the herculean 
strength, the amazing courage and daring, nat- 
ural at this time of life, are the divinely given 
productive forces. 

When a man passes out of this period he ma- 
tures. The fire begins to die out of his bones; 
his blood is cooling off, his mind is sobering, 
his spirit is calming. The beauty of youth fades, 
the strength of the young man fails. The youth- 
ful forces which lately gave him such immense 
advantage are giving way, and he finds himself 
getting more and more out of touch with the 
young life about him. Another young man, 
without knowledge or experience, - is drawing 
the crowd after him. He finds that those of his 
own age have cooled off also; they have made 
their choices, they have sealed their destinies. 
Almost every man of them will go on forever 
in the path already chosen. The man past thirty 
usually refuses to be influenced, and finds that 
his own influence is very limited. There are a 
few exceptional men who keep youth beyond the 
limit of twenty-eight years, but they are only 
a small per cent of those who fancy that they 
are still young. 



1 66 The Divinity Within Us. 

For these reasons I believe every young man 
should get out of school and into the work of 
his life as soon after the age of twenty as pos- 
sible. The choice of life's work will be made 
long before this if the young man will study 
himself and listen to God. Every man should 
have the highest possible intellectual equipment, 
but it is dangerous to hang around a college or 
university until he is thirty years old. That 
glorious period between twenty and thirty is the 
time for work^ and not the time for preparation 
for work. When that period comes, a man had 
better be ready for his work and at it. Better 
have less of books, if necessary, and more of 
youth to put into his work. Many a man has 
tarried at college under the pretext of ^'grinding 
his ax," expecting finally to get out and cut timi- 
ber at a marvelous rate ; but when he did get out 
he found that the ax had lost its mettle or its 
edge, or that he had lost the strength that should 
wield it, and that common hewers of wood, who 
never saw a college, cut more timber than he. 

2. Dangerous Years, — Not long ago some 
writer stated that the period of greatest danger 
to men is at the age of from forty-five to sixty. 
This proposition was startling to me; but the 
more I think of it, the more I am inclined to be- 



The Days of Our Pilgrimage. 167 

lieve it is true. There is no lack of men who 
have broken down at that critical age. 

Courage, hope, and enthusiasm are natural to 
the youth. The very exuberance of animal life 
will stimulate these. Hope makes a man look 
forward, courage makes him step forth, and en- 
thusiasm quickens his pace. Such a man is en- 
ergetic, aggressive, and progressive. True, there 
is danger of these running to excess or turning 
in the wrong direction ; but man is in greater dan- 
ger without these qualities than with them. Cour- 
age, hope, and enthusiasm are indispensable, if 
life is to be worth living. They should have a 
surer foundation in every human character than 
the animal spirits afford. Our animal life is not 
certain nor permanent. If these indispensable 
qualities, courage, hope, and enthusiasm, have 
no other basis than our exuberant animal spirits, 
as the outward man perishes the inward man 
will surely give way. The inward man must not 
be so utterly dependent upon the outward man. 
I am persuaded that thousands give way intel- 
lectually and morally about the time their phys- 
ical vitality begins to fail. 

Through youth and early manhood we may 
nurse and foster our secret sins, keep them un- 
der cover, and think we have the mastery over 



1 68 The Divinity Within Us. 

them ; but in that dangerous period from forty- 
five to sixty our strength begins to fail, we be- 
come less watchful, less active, less careful, and 
these well-grown sins gain the ascendency and 
overpower us. Many a moderate drinker has 
become a drunkard in this period of life. Many 
a man who for a long time has known himself to 
be dishonest has been revealed suddenly as a 
thief. We cannot trust to covering our sins, for 
they will soon grow too large to be hidden. 
Many a man has had his present life ruined be- 
cause he could no longer manage his sin nor 
hide it. 

Some men get tired of life by the time they 
are forty-five or fifty. They lose interest in it. 
To them it comes to be old and commonplace. 
In youth it had a charm which it no longer 
holds. They become less careful of it. Thev 
let it waste. They relax effort. They turn 
loose and drift; and any man adrift is fast 
going to the bad. In this period many men 
cease to grow intellectually and morally. They 
come to a dead line; they had better die. It is 
great to keep alive until we die, but it is terrible 
to breathe and move for years after w^e are really 
dead. There is no place nor welcome in the 
world for a dead man. He belongs in the grave. 



The Days of Our Pilgrimage, 169 

AVe sometimes complain of the brevity of life; 
but three score and ten years are too much for 
some men. It were better for them if they could 
get out of this world before they are forty. 

Some men by middle life have gained a busi- 
ness success. They have made money, and they 
take their wealth as a license to do wrong. The 
thrift, economy, self-sacrifice, and sobriety which 
they practiced in order to get money they lay 
aside as no longer needed. They have the means 
for the gratification of the flesh ; so they say 
with the rich fool : ''Soul, thou hast much goods 
laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, 
drink, and be merry.'' They become profligate 
spendthrifts, are given to luxury, and run to 
many harmful excesses. Money reveals the fool 
in many a man. A man needs an unusually 
strong character in order to stand a fortune sud- 
denly inherited or quickty acquired in business. 
Many break down under their very success. 

Others by this time lose the wealth amid which 
they have been born and to which they have been 
accustomed ; and thus is stripped from them the 
cloak of their inward weakness and vice. A 
financial rating is all the standing some men 
have. After a fashion, they are enabled to get 
along on that. Their fellow-men tolerate them 



lyo The Divinity Within Us. 

because of their wealth, and largely forget that 
they have nothing else to recommend them. 
What shall a man do if his wealth is taken away, 
if he has wholly depended upon it for his social 
standing and for the joys of life? Will not his 
wreck be complete and known to all men? It 
takes an unusually strong character to stand a 
reverse in business or the sudden loss of a for- 
tune. Thousands commit suicide under such 
circumstances. Most men who fail in business 
at this critical age cannot hope to begin anew 
and make another fortune. 

Still others gain power and influence and 
come into commanding position about this time. 
It is always a critical moment when a man is 
promoted or invested with power. He may 
think of himself more highly than he ought to 
think. Nothing is more fatal to a man than the 
conceit that he is some great one. He may be 
tempted to use his power, influence, position for 
personal ends. Whenever any man begins the 
selfish use of such gifts, he begins to lose the gifts 
themselves; and he will as surely come to ruin 
as did the gifted Absalom. A man is especially 
liable to wreck if he has risen by unfair methods, 
or if he has been inspired in his progress by the 
hope of personal advantage, or if all the way 



The Days of Our Pilgrimage, 171 

his heart has been full of motives of policy. 
Thousands who have thus advanced, and who 
thus have won the suffrages of their fellows for 
positions and honors, have become intoxicated 
and reckless with their attainments ; they have 
betrayed sacred trusts, or their constituents have 
discovered them incapable and unworthy. If a 
man is intent on building a character, he is 
careful. He has not the power or is not in po- 
sition to be reckless. Many a man smashes his 
reputation at one fell blow so soon as he gets 
the power and into a position where he dares. 
Such men would never have had any character 
if they could have got on in the world without 
it. 

It is also dangerous for a man who has long 
been in place and power to step down and out. 
Many men are laid aside at fifty or sixty, and 
younger men are put in their places. It takes 
a good strong character to submit graciously to 
this shelving process. In thousands of instances 
it is a great injustice to the old man. Often it 
is due to the physical failure of the old man 
rather than to any other sort of failure. In any 
case, the devil makes it the subject of an interview 
with him. The old man is a noble specimen if 
he keeps the tempter from injecting poison into 



172 The Divinity Within Us. 

him. He may be too old to indulge in the reck- 
lessness and excesses that would tempt a young- 
er man, and the devil would not try to lead him 
into them ; but he is not too old to sour, to think 
evil, to cherish malice, to fret, to plot revenge, 
to become gloomy and pessimistic, to lose faith 
in men and his love for them, to drag out his 
latter years in misery and failure and inward 
sin. Superannuation is a great trial, and he is 
a great man who bears it right. 

Success is the little god of millions— not the 
high success of being, but the cheaper success 
of possessing and achieving. Comparatively few, 
however, attain eminent success even of this 
kind. Most of us have little and do little that 
the world wull count. I am persuaded that most 
people have a better record in heaven than they 
have in this world. The angels think a great 
deal better of many of our poor and unsuccess- 
ful people than we do. If a man has struggled 
for success until he is fifty years old, yet has 
not attained it, he is tempted to despair and quit. 
It takes a good deal of grit and perseverance 
to continue hopeful and enthusiastic and active 
after fifty years of failure. Here is a fine foun- 
dation for a ruinous temptation. The arch fiend 
can stand on such a platform and preach pow- 



The Days of Our Pilgrimage, 173 

erfully and effectively against perseverance, 
against patience, against hope, against faith, and 
against the goodness of God. Watch the man 
with a long record of failure. Will he be pa- 
tient? Will he continue to have faith in him- 
self and in his fellow-men and in his God? 
Will he continue to hope? Will he struggle on? 
He is a man indeed if he does not sour, com- 
plain, and despair. Despair is ruin. 

A weak foundation may support a house until 
it is half done ; but when the builder attempts to 
add any more weight, it will give way. From 
many causes the foundation of a man's charac- 
ter may be insufficient. He may possibly get 
along on this poor foundation until he reaches 
middle life, but the weight of added years will 
be too much for it. The latter years cannot 
have the capstone and crown of glory that should 
finish a man's life if there are miistakes and fail- 
ures in the foundation of character. Many a life 
tumbles down in failure because founded on un- 
certain sand. 

Though the building, contrary to all architec- 
tural rules, is constructed out of plumb, it will 
stand until carried to a certain height, as does 
the leaning tower of Pisa ; but when the builder 
attempts to carry it higher, it topples to the 



174 ^^^ Divinity Within Us. 

ground, because the law of gravity will not be 
violated. So a man may live a crooked life for 
a while, grow up out of plumb, and seem to 
stand all right; but as he towers into these dan- 
gerous years from forty-five to sixty, he becomes 
shaky and unsteady, and falls to the ground. 
The laws of righteousness will not be violated. 

The first success a man should be anxious 
about is the insurance of his character. Let 
character be laid broad, deep, and strong. Let 
us build ourselves up to middle life in plumb. 
During the first fifty years of life let us take 
every precaution against the possible dangers of 
this critical period. The dangers of this period 
are not so great that they cannot be successfully 
met. Thousands are triumphing against them 
every day, and their lives are like the path of 
the just, ''that shineth more and more unto the 
perfect day." 

3. Old Age. — The purpose of the human 
TDody is the development of the human spirit. 
The infant soul is attentive only at the touch 
of the material. The young soul, entangled in 
the fine meshes of a sensitive flesh, is first aroused 
and instructed through the five physical senses. 
Through these the soul receives not only its im- 
pressions of the material, but also its first intima- 



The Days of Our Pilgrimage. 175 

tions of the spiritual. For many years God can 
best reach and draw out its powers through them. 
There is a system of wireless communication be- 
tween God and man^ but man must be educated 
up to it. The life of the body is the period allot- 
ted for us to become experts in this method of 
communication. Gradually a man should learn to 
get on without the instruments of the flesh ; and 
at three score and ten he should be wholly in- 
dependent of so temporary and unsatisfactory a 
thing as the human body. 

Long before this limit the physical powers 
will begin to fail^ the well-wrought frame to 
decay. The body must die. First, because the 
material cannot endure. ''The things which are 
seen are temporal." Secondly, because the body 
must lose its present appetites, passions, weak- 
nesses, and mortality, in order that it may be 
invested with life, appetites, passions, and pow- 
ers that are holier and more heavenly. Some 
of our physical qualities are too gross for that 
high world, and others will not be needed there. 
So our very bodies are to get ready for heaven 
by laying ofif the coarse and superfluous. The 
resurrected body will be clothed with power, 
incorruption, and immortality. ''As we have 
borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear 



176 The Divinity Within Us. 

the image of the heavenly/' Thirdly, because 
all our life must be concentrated in the intel- 
lectual and spiritual. Helen Keller, deprived of 
the sense of sight and the sense of hearing, lives 
mainly by the sense of touch. Conducting near- 
ly all her correspondence with the outside world 
through this one sense, it has become for her 
intensely keen. So when God would develop in 
us the spiritual senses he takes away the phys- 
ical. Their gradual failure forces us to rely, 
more and more upon our finer powers. As we 
cease to live by what we see, hear, taste, smell, 
and touch, we come to depend for life upon such 
finer powers as thought, faith, love. Thus we 
come into the use of nobler powers, and are 
put in more intimate touch with the spiritual 
world. The very purpose for which the grain 
of wheat perishes in the earth is that it may 
nourish the tender blade. While the body is 
young, strong, abounding with life and passions, 
a man may be more an animal than a spirit. 
The life must become less sensual that it may 
be more spiritual. 

Since they are so intimately bound up and so 
interdependent, will not the gradual decay and 
certain fall of the body involve in its ruin the 
soul also? This happens with many, and here 



The Days of Oar Pilgrimage, 177 

is danger for all. Some get old, feeble, and 
worthless in mind and heart as well as in body. 
With them life narrows daily. They are the 
victims of discontent, distrust, and peevishness. 
One cause is inactivity, which means stagnation ; 
and this breeds all sorts of diseases. One be- 
comes inactive because he has lived only for the 
gratification of the flesh; and, the fleshly de- 
mands giving way, there is no longer anything 
for which to live. He is a selfish man, and the 
higher ideals of life are unknown to him. An- 
other quits his w^ork because he is so concerned 
over his physical infirmities. The one all-en- 
grossing care of the body calls him from every 
high service. His soul rebels at the decay of the 
flesh; clings to it, weeps over it, and will not 
give it up. He broods over his physical ills 
until the contagion fastens upon mind and heart. 
Another gives up his high calling because of 
the forced retirement of the body. Heretofore 
feet and legs have carried mind and heart. Now 
they can go no longer ; and the soul, not know- 
ing how to go without them, sits down with 
them. Hitherto mind and heart have lived and 
wrought under the stimulus of physical energy. 
Now the body being necessarily superannuated, 
the soul voluntarily superannuates itself. Hav- 
12 



178 The Divinity Within Us, 

ing never learned independence, it goes out of 
business because the fleshly menials are too fee- 
ble to work. Still another will not keep up 
with the march of events. He is not abreast of 
the age. He is not in sympathy with the times. 
He dwells in the past, keeps company with the 
ghosts of other years. He deliberately refuses 
to take hold of the living issues of the present. 
He distrusts the new order of things and be- 
lieves that wisdom will die with himself. 

Yet there are choice spirits who flourish in 
'^immortal youth," unhurt amidst the ''wreck of 
matter." What is their secret? First, early 
culture of mind and heart. The highest culture 
must begin early. The deficiencies of the teens 
are not so embarrassing anywhere in life as in 
the eighties. The truly cultured are least liable 
to the infirmities of mind and heart. There is 
an intellectual and moral vigor that is unaffected 
by changes in the world below. Secondly, at 
the first intimation of physical failure a wise 
man resorts to some means of quickening mind 
and heart. He assumes some new burden. He 
plunges into some new enterprise. Year after 
year he continues the treatment. Gladstone un- 
dertook the mastery of a difficult foreign lan- 
guage. Thirdly, as the body becomes a dead 



The Days of Our Pilgrimage, 179 

weight upon the spirit, the man summons all his 
might, receives divine help, then resolutely and 
cheerfully shoulders his burden. The body car- 
ried him in youth ; now he must carry it. The 
body did its work joyfully; why should not 
he? Fourthly, such a man believes there is 
something for him to do as long as he is here. 
He is persistent and industrious lest he be taken 
away before he finishes the work upon which 
he has set his heart. It should not be light 
work upon which a restless and childish old man 
may while away his superfluous days; but a 
great matter, fit to employ a giant mind, worthy 
a noble heart. Fifthly, he keeps his heart with 
all diligence. Whatever he may lose physically, 
he knows it is not necessary to lose intellectually 
and morally. He knows the worth of the treas- 
ures in the inner man. He did not buy them 
with infinite pains to be robbed of them. These 
are the things that make him rich toward God. 
Sixthly, he knows himself to be now in more 
intimate touch with the sources of life than ever 
before. Thought rejoices in fullness of strength. 
Faith grasps firmly. Hope is steadfast. Even 
greater than these is charity. All things are his, 
and he has learned to take the best. Seventhly, 
he is conscious of immortality. There is a "di- 



i8o The Divinity Within Us, 

vinity that stirs within" him and intimates eter- 
nity to him. He never expects to be less aHve 
than now, but more. What are seventy years 
when compared to the eternal life promised 
him? Compare thirty years to eternity; then 
say why the man of seventy must be called old, 
while the man of thirty is called young. Both 
are in the very beginning of life. Before we 
have fairly entered eternity, there will be almost 
no difference between the ages of the first man 
born on earth and the last. It is impossible for 
the man who lives right to get old. ''Though 
our outward man perish, yet the inward man is 
renewed day by day.'' The inner man is re- 
newed by the very failure of the outward man. 
The best thing is ever before a man — life, life 
in the fullest sense, life eternal. 

"Grow old along with me! 
The best is yet to be, 

The last of life, for which the first was made; 
Our times are in His hand 
Who saith: *A whole I planned, 

Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be 
afraid r" 



NOV 22 1907 



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